Report by the Secretariat - Organization of American States



|World Trade |RESTRICTED |

|Organization | |

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| |WT/TPR/S/275 |

| |13 November 2012 |

| |(12-6166) |

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|Trade Policy Review Body | |

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|TRADE POLICY REVIEW |

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|Report by the Secretariat |

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|UNITED STATES |

|This report, prepared for the eleventh Trade Policy Review of United States, has been drawn up by the WTO |

|Secretariat on its own responsibility. The Secretariat has, as required by the Agreement establishing the |

|Trade Policy Review Mechanism (Annex 3 of the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization),|

|sought clarification from the United States on its trade policies and practices. |

| |

|Any technical questions arising from this report may be addressed to Messrs. John Finn (tel: 022/739 5081) |

|and Pierre Latrille (tel: 022/739 5266), Mrs. Denby Probst (tel: 022/739 5847), and Messrs. Jesse Kreier |

|(tel: 022/739 5140), Juan Marchetti (tel:  022/739 5871), and Raymundo Valdés (tel: 022/739 5346). |

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|Document WT/TPR/G/275 contains the policy statement submitted by the United States. |

| |

Note: This report is subject to restricted circulation and press embargo until the end of the first session of the meeting of the Trade Policy Review Body on the United States.

CONTENTS

Page

SUMMARY ix

I. ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT 1

(1) Recent Economic Developments 1

(2) Monetary, Fiscal, and Other Policies 4

(3) Developments in Trade and Foreign Direct Investment 6

(i) Merchandise trade 6

(ii) Trade in services 10

(iii) Foreign direct investment 12

II. TRADE policy and investment REGIMEs 14

(1) Trade Policy Formulation and Framework 14

(2) Participation in the World Trade Organization 15

(3) Preferential Trade Agreements and Arrangements 16

(i) Reciprocal trade agreements 17

(ii) Unilateral preferences 19

(4) Investment Agreements and Policies 26

(i) Bilateral investment treaties and framework agreements 26

(ii) Investment promotion 27

(iii) Investment regulations and restrictions 28

(5) Aid-For-Trade 29

III. TRADE POLICIES AND PRACTICES BY MEASURE 30

(1) Measures Directly Affecting Imports 30

(i) Customs procedures 30

(ii) Customs valuation 32

(iii) Rules of origin 32

(iv) Tariffs 38

(v) Other charges affecting imports 42

(vi) Contingency measures 46

(vii) Quantitative trade measures, restrictions, controls, and licensing 54

(viii) Technical regulations and standards 58

(ix) Sanitary and phytosanitary measures 61

(2) Measures Directly Affecting Exports 65

(i) Customs procedures and documentation 65

(ii) Export taxes and fees 65

(iii) Prohibitions, restrictions, and licensing 66

(iv) Official support and related fiscal measures 70

(3) Other Measures Affecting Investment and Trade 72

(i) Business framework and business investment incentives 72

(ii) State trading enterprises, government corporations, and government enterprises 73

(iii) Government procurement 76

(iv) Subsidies and other government assistance 79

Page

(v) Competition policy 83

(vi) Trade-related intellectual property rights 84

IV. trade policies by sector 99

(1) Agriculture 99

(i) Agriculture in the United States 99

(ii) Agriculture policies 103

(iii) Levels of support 108

(2) Fisheries 111

(i) Fisheries in the United States 111

(ii) Trade 113

(iii) Fisheries policy 114

(3) Services 117

(i) Environmental services 117

(ii) Financial services 121

references 129

APPENDIX TABLES 135

CHARTS

Page

I. ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT

I.1 Contributions to real GDP growth, 2008-12 1

I.2 U.S. current account and net financial flows, 2008-12 3

I.3 Index of trade-weighted exchange rate of dollar, 2008-12 4

I.4 Merchandise trade, by main origin and destination, 2010 and 2011 8

I.5 Merchandise trade, by product, 2010 and 2011 9

I.6 Foreign direct investment into the United States, 2007-11 13

II. TRADE AND INVESTMENT REGIMES

II.1 Formulation of the trade policy 14

II.2 Imports for consumption, by type of import regime, 2011 16

II.3 Unilateral preferences imports, by programme, 2011 20

III. TRADE POLICIES AND PRACTICES BY MEASURE

III.1 Overview of non-preferential rules of origin 33

III.2 MNF tariff distribution, 2012 40

III.3 Federal excise taxes reported and collected, fiscal year 2010 46

III.4 Anti-dumping investigations initiated, by region, 2008-12 47

III.5 Anti-dumping investigations initiated, by product, 2008-12 48

III.6 Countervailing measures initiated, by region, 2008-12 51

III.7 Countervailing measures initiated, by product, 2008-12 52

III.8 Federal Government procurement, by agency, 2010 76

III.9 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Funds paid out 82

III.10 Royalties and licence fees, 2002-11 86

III.11 Royalties and licence fees, distribution of receipts and payments, 2010 87

IV. TRADE POLICIES BY SECTOR

IV.1 Exports and imports of agriculture products, 2002-11 101

IV.2 Green Box support in the United States, 2001-09 109

IV.3 Amber Box support in the United States, 2001-09 110

TABLES

I. ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT

I.1 Selected macroeconomic indicators, 2008-11 2

I.2 U.S. commercial services exports, by type, 2008-11 11

I.3 U.S. commercial services imports, by type, 2008-11 11

I.4 U.S. commercial services exports (modes 1, 2, and 4), by destination, 2008-10 11

I.5 U.S. commercial services imports (modes 1, 2, and 4), by origin, 2008-10 12

II. TRADE AND INVESTMENT REGIMES

II.1 Economic impact and predictions for the new free-trade agreements 17

II.2 Overview of the new U.S. FTAs, 1 January 2010-30 June 2012 17

II.3 Trade under reciprocal trade agreements, 2011 19

Page

II.4 Overview of GSP 21

II.5 Overview of the AGOA 22

II.6 Overview of CBERA 23

II.7 Overview of CBTPA 24

II.8 Overview of ATPA/ATPDEA 25

II.9 Overview of trade with freely associated States 25

II.10 Overview of trade with the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Qualified Industrial Zones 26

II.11 CFIUS covered transaction notices, withdrawals, and decisions, 2009-11 28

III. TRADE POLICIES AND PRACTICES BY MEASURE

III.1 Overview of preferential rules of origin criteria, 2012 34

III.2 Exemptions to the section 304 marking requirement 37

III.3 Changes or developments in U.S. preferential rules of origin, January 2010-June 2012 37

III.4 Structure of the tariff schedule, selected years 39

III.5 MPF exemptions, 2012 43

III.6 Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act fees 44

III.7 Agriculture fees, 2012 45

III.8 Anti-dumping investigations, 2008-12 47

III.9 Anti-dumping measures, by country, 2008-11 49

III.10 Overview of five-year sunset investigations initiated, as of year-end 2011 49

III.11 Countervailing duty investigations initiated, 2008-12 51

III.12 Overview of five-year sunset reviews initiated, as of year-end 2011 52

III.13 U.S. FTA safeguard implementation legislation, as of 2012 53

III.14 Products subject to U.S. import licensing procedures, 2011 54

III.15 Laws, regulations and guidelines on developing technical regulations and

conformity assessment procedures 59

III.16 Recalls by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, FY 2007-11 61

III.17 Notifications by the United States, 1 January 2010 to 30 June 2012 63

III.18 Ex-Im Bank authorizations, 2008-11 72

III.19 Government sponsored enterprises 74

III.20 Government corporations, 2011 74

III.21 State-trading enterprises, 2010 75

III.22 Federal subsidy programmes, 2011 (fiscal year 2010) 79

III.23 Federal programmes on biofuels, 2011 81

III.24 DOJ investigations initiated pursuant to antitrust laws, 2008-11 83

III.25 FTC investigations initiated pursuant to antitrust laws, 2008-11 83

III.26 Summary of intellectual property protection in the United States, May 2012 91

IV. TRADE POLICIES BY SECTOR

IV.1 Value of production, 2007-11 99

IV.2 U.S. and world production and trade of selected commodities, 2006-11 100

IV.3 Exports and imports of selected products, 2005-11 102

IV.4 Deliveries of food aid from the United States, 2006-10 105

IV.5 Total producer support estimate and single commodity transfer values for selected

commodities, 2002-10 111

IV.6 Commercial landings of selected species, 2002-10 112

IV.7 Trade in fish and fisheries products, 2004-10 114

IV.8 Market structure of environmental services 117

IV.9 Private-sector involvement in water and waste water management services, 2012 119

IV.10 Summarized trade regimes for environmental services 120

APPENDIX TABLES

Page

I. ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT

AI.1 Balance of payments, 2008-11 137

AI.2 Merchandise exports and re-exports, by trading partner, 2008-11 138

AI.3 Merchandise exports and re-exports, by group of products, 2008-11 139

AI.4 Merchandise imports, by trading partner, 2008-11 140

AI.5 Merchandise imports, by group of products, 2008-11 141

II. TRADE AND INVESTMENT REGIMES

AII.1 WTO dispute settlement cases, 1 January 2010-30 June 2012 142

AII.2 Selected notifications to the Central Registry of Notifications (CRN),

1 January 2010-30 June 2012 144

III. TRADE POLICIES AND PRACTICES BY MEASURE

AIII.1 Summary analysis of the MFN tariff, 2012 146

AIII.2 Summary analysis of tariffs, according to preferential agreements, interim rates

as of 30 June 2012 147

AIII.3 Royalties and licence fees, 2010 148

AIII.4 Main dedicated IP laws and regulations 149

SUMMARY

THE UNITED STATES' ECONOMY HAS BEEN MARKED BY SLOW BUT STEADY RECOVERY AND SOME RE-BALANCING SINCE ITS LAST REVIEW. MERCHANDISE AND SERVICES TRADE FIGURES HAVE RE-BOUNDED SIGNIFICANTLY SINCE THE 2009 FINANCIAL CRISIS AND HAVE NOW REACHED NEW PEAK LEVELS, SURPASSING PREVIOUS 2008 PEAK LEVELS. SERVICES TRADE IN PARTICULAR HAS SHOWN A GROWING TRADE SURPLUS, AND SERVICES ACCOUNT FOR APPROXIMATELY 70% OF U.S. OUTPUT. THE UNITED STATES HAS SET IN MOTION POLICIES FOR DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL REBALANCING; I.E. MOVING AWAY FROM CONSUMPTION AND REAL ESTATE AND ENCOURAGING EXPORT AND INVESTMENT GROWTH.

Since its last Review, United States has moved ahead with the legislative approval of three free-trade agreements and the extension of two lapsed preference programmes (the Generalized System of Preferences and the Andean Trade Preferences Act (ATPA)). The free-trade agreements with Korea and Colombia entered into force in March and May 2012, respectively; while the FTA with Panama has not been implemented at the time of writing. According to the 2012 Trade Policy Agenda, the United States is working toward the conclusion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership regional trade agreement and towards extending permanent normal trade relations with Russia. Preferential trade accounts for an important and growing percentage of U.S. trade; in 2011, 20.1% of U.S. imports were under preferential regimes, reciprocal preferences accounted for 16.4% and unilateral preferences for 3.7%.

Foreign direct investment continues to play an important role in the U.S. economy by making important contributions to U.S. employment, R&D, and exports. The United States is the world's largest recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI), which totalled US$228 billion in 2011. As concerns investment policy, after several years of review, the United States completed a new model bilateral investment treaty (BIT) framework containing detailed provisions to foster or facilitate the flow of investment; and in June 2011, new steps were taken to facilitate and attract inward FDI into the United States by creating the first government-initiated centralized investment promotion body through the SelectUSA initiative.

The financial services sector accounted for 8.5% of U.S. GDP in 2010, 47% of which was generated by banking activities, 33% by insurance, and 16% by securities trading activities. Over the last decade, the U.S. has run trade surpluses in financial services and trade deficits in insurance. The United States has the largest securities and insurance markets in the world. The main regulatory reform since the last Review is the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which entered into force in July 2010. The Act's main objectives include promoting financial stability, ending "too big to fail", ending bailouts, protecting taxpayers, and protecting consumers from abusive financial services practices.

Intellectual property (IP) has a central place in the domestic economy and the international trade profile of the United States. The United States is one of the most well established and mature IP jurisdictions, however, the legal, economic, and trade policy context of IP continued to evolve significantly in the review period, notably through major legislative developments, significant judicial decisions, regulatory legislation, strengthened domestic enforcement, an enhanced policy focus on the role of IP, and consolidation of a trend towards development of markets in IP.

U.S. import policy has remained relatively static in recent years, with few major legislative or regulatory initiatives. On the export side, the United States has launched the National Export Initiative, aimed at improving trade advocacy and pursuing policies to promote growth; and the Export Control Reform Initiative, to reconcile policies for export controls. In addition, the Export-Import Bank has significantly increased its export financing to support the National Export Initiative.

Since 2010, growth has averaged 2.2% annually. Recovery slowed somewhat in 2011 and original projections for 2012 have been revised slightly downwards, in large part due to the impact of the European financial crisis and its impact on third country markets. While there are generally positive signs in the U.S. recovery, it will still take more time to reach pre-crisis levels, and certain aspects of the economy still show weaknesses, such as the housing market and unemployment levels.

International trade and investment policies play an important role in the U.S. economy, with investment, consumer spending, and exports contributing to the growth in real GDP in recent years. In 2010, the President set a goal of doubling exports in five years, and two major policies have since emerged. Exports, as a share of GDP, have grown by 13% since the end of the recession and reached a historic high of 13.8% of GDP in 2011.

Following a significant downturn during the financial crisis, U.S. merchandise trade (imports and exports) rebounded in 2010 and 2011 and surpassed 2008 record levels. While both imports and exports grew, import growth outpaced export growth, thus the worsening of the merchandise trade deficit. Imports grew 16% to reach US$2,236 billion, and exports also grew 16% to reach US$1,497 billion. Services trade, on the other hand, has shown a strong and growing trade surplus in recent years and has had an important impact on the current account balance. U.S. commercial services exports grew 9.2% in 2011, while imports grew 6.9%, thus the trade in services surplus widened to US$186 billion.

The United States has one of the largest agriculture sectors in the world with a total value of production of US$372 billion in 2011. It is also the largest agriculture exporting country, with exports of US$144.8 billion, although agriculture represents less than 1% of GDP. Due to its large share in world production, exports, and imports of agricultural products, developments in the United States, including changes to agricultural policies, have an important impact on world markets. There have been no major changes to agriculture policies in the United States since its last Review, and The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 remains the basis for most agricultural programmes until it expires.

On customs-related issues, the U.S. continues to move forward on a number of trade facilitating initiatives that were passed into legislation several years ago, but have been delayed or not yet been fully implemented, e.g. scanning of maritime containers and air cargo, thus their full impact or effects are not yet clear. Long-standing laws and regulations on rules of origin and marking requirements remain virtually unchanged, albeit their complexity and application remain unnecessarily cumbersome with the possibility of several different rules being applicable across sectors and final outcome being dependent on a number of factors. The United States also imposes a number of fees or charges on imports that vary depending on the source, value, and type of import; these include the merchandise processing fee, COBRA fees, harbour maintenance tax, agriculture fees, and excise taxes. On customs valuation, the situation has remained virtually unchanged with no new legislation or procedures, and the position is similar for import licensing.

U.S. tariff protection on imports remained nearly unchanged during the review period and in general remains relatively low. Significant amounts of trade enter the United States duty free under MFN tariffs with zero rates of duty or through the preference programmes. However, significant tariff peaks remain in certain sectors, such as footwear, leather, textiles and clothing, and in agriculture where there is also a considerable number of non-ad valorem tariffs.

The United States continues to use trade remedies as part of its trade policy, as the use of anti-dumping (AD) and countervailing cases continued during the period. The initiation of AD investigations increased from 3 to 15 cases in 2011 after only a few initiations in 2010. There have been no particular trends in the overall number of CVD investigations initiated in recent years, but as with AD investigations, the majority of CVD investigations initiated during the past five years involved imports from Asian countries (92%). During the review period, the United States adopted or proposed several modifications to its methodology for the calculation of dumping margins in the case of non-market economies.

The United States continues to be active in the areas of standards and phytosanitary measures, especially in the work of the WTO Committees, with respect to making notifications, and with disputes concerning these subjects. Between 1 January 2010 and 30 June 2012, the United States made 520 notifications to the Committee on TBT of which, 337 were addenda or corrigenda, and 537 to the Committee on SPS. With a few exceptions, such as the Food Safety Modernization Act, the procedures for developing technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures for TBT and SPS matters have not changed over the past few years.

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