At the direction of President Trump, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (“USTR”) has announced the United States’ intent to withdraw beneficiary status from India and Turkey under the U.S. Generalized System of Preferences (“GSP”) program.
The GSP program is a program designed to promote economic growth in developing countries and provides preferential duty-free treatment for over 3,500 products from a wide range of designated beneficiary countries when imported into the United States.
In its recent announcement, USTR cited India’s “failure to . . . provide equitable and reasonable access to its markets in numerous sectors” and indicated Turkey is “sufficiently economically developed” as the reasoning behind the intended removal of beneficiary status.
As per the statute, the President notified Congress of this decision on March 4, 2019; however, the termination of GSP treatment will not take effect for at least 60 days and will be enacted by a Presidential Proclamation.
We continue to monitor this situation closely and will report additional developments as more information becomes available. For more information, please contact Nithya Nagarajan, Cortney Morgan, Jeffrey Neeley, or Robert Stang.