Tariff Tool Demystifies U.S. Trade Agreements for Manufacturers
Guest blog by Justin Hoffmann, International Economist in the Office of Trade Policy Analysis.
Manufacturers who are looking to expand into new markets are often faced with myriad questions about tariffs and barriers to these new markets. Figuring out which products have what tariffs can be a very frustrating and time consuming process. That is why the International Trade Agency has developed a Free Trade Agreement Tariff Tool to help manufacturers quickly find the information they need.
For manufacturers, America’s Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners can be an attractive markets because these negotiated agreements eliminate tariffs, remove non-tariff barriers, and secure non-discriminatory treatment for U.S. goods and services.
While these agreements bring many benefits for manufacturers, they can be confusing. For example, in the U.S.-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement, the tariff schedules alone for that agreement go on for nearly a thousand pages. If a manufacturer is dedicated enough to slog through the pages to find out where his specific product is in the tariff schedule, he will learn, for example, that the tariff charged on his product before the agreement went into effect is 20 percent. Additionally, after some further digging around the agreement text, the exporter would also learn that the tariff on his product “shall be removed in ten equal annual stages beginning on the date this Agreement enters into force, and such goods shall be duty-free, effective January 1 of year ten”.
It is pretty clear that these lengthy documents are crafted by trade negotiators and lawyers and are really not written for U.S. manufacturers who are simply trying to export their goods to new markets.
The good news is that the FTA Tariff Tool provides this information instantly and almost effortlessly.
