Congress has created multiple trade preference programs designed to foster economic growth, reform and development in less developed countries. These programs give temporary, non-reciprocal, duty-free U.S. market access to select exports of eligible countries. Congress conducts regular oversight of these programs, repeatedly revising and extending them. This book discusses the major U.S. trade preference programs, their possible economic effects, stakeholder interests and legislative options

U.S. trade preference programs promote economic development in poorer nations by providing export opportunities. The Generalized System of Preferences, Caribbean Basin Initiative, Andean Trade Preference Act, and African Growth and Opportunity Act unilaterally reduce U.S. tariffs for many products from over 130 countries. However, 3 of these programs expire partially or in full in 2008, and Congress is exploring options as it considers renewal. This report reviews the programs¿ effects on the U.S. and on foreign beneficiaries¿ exports and development, identifies policy trade-offs concerning these programs, and evaluates the overall U.S. approach to preference programs. Includes recommendations. Charts and tables.

U.S. trade preference programs promote economic development in poorer nations by providing export opportunities. The Generalized System of Preferences, Caribbean Basin Initiative, Andean Trade Preference Act, and African Growth and Opportunity Act unilaterally reduce U.S. tariffs for many products from over 130 countries. However, three of these programs expire partially or in full this year, and Congress is exploring options as it considers renewal. The author was asked to review the programs' effects on the United States and on foreign beneficiaries' exports and development, identify policy trade-offs concerning these programs, and evaluate the overall U.S. approach to preference programs. To address these objectives, the authors analysed trade data, reviewed trade literature and program documents, interviewed U.S. officials, and did fieldwork in six countries. This is an excerpted and indexed version.

U.S. trade preference programs promote economic development in poorer nations by providing duty-free export opportunities in the U.S. The Generalized System of Preferences, Caribbean Basin Initiative, Andean Trade Preference Act, and African Growth and Opportunity Act unilaterally reduce U.S. tariffs for many products from over 130 countries. However, two of these programs expire partially or in full this year, and Congress is exploring options as it considers renewal. This testimony describes the growth in preference program imports since 1992, identifies policy trade-offs concerning these programs, and evaluates the overall U.S. approach to preference programs. Includes recommendations. Tables.

"In recent debates, trade preference erosion has been viewed by some as damaging to developing countries, and by others as insignificant, except in a few cases. But little data have been available to back either view. The objective of this paper is to improve our measures of the size, utilization, and value of all U.S. nonreciprocal trade preference programs in order to shed light on this debate. Highly disaggregated data are used to quantify the margins, coverage, utilization, and value of agricultural and nonagricultural tariff preferences for all beneficiary countries in the U.S. regional programs and in the Generalized System of Preferences. Results show that U.S. regional tariff preference programs are generally characterized by high coverage of beneficiary countries' exports, high utilization by beneficiary countries, and low tariff preference margins (except on apparel). For 29 countries, the value of U.S. tariff preferences was 5 percent or more of 2003 dutiable exports to the United States, even after incorporating actual utilization. Most of this value is attributable to nonagricultural tariff preferences, and to apparel preferences in particular. These results suggest that preference erosion may be significant for more countries than many had thought."--World Bank web site.

The issue of SDT has become very topical again, following a period during which it was viewed as an outdated concept for the multilateral trading system. We therefore devote attention as well to a number of recent contributions that discuss (i) whether there is a continued need for SDT, and (ii) how this might be designed from both a development (recipient) objective and from the perspective of the trading system more generally. A major theme of the survey is that most of the issues that are debated today were already being discussed in the 1960s. We conclude that those who questioned the value of unilateral preferences have proven to be prescient.

Monograph on trade development for developing countries, namely the ' generalised system of preferential tariffs (gsp) - discusses its evolution, including the role of UN and of GATT and taking into account the role of developed countries, the role of EC countries and the impact of a changed free trade area in Western Europe, and covers economic integration, economic agreement, trade barriers, the new international economic order and 'most favoured nation' tariff reductions. Bibliography, references and statistical tables.