NCBFAA calls for U.S. to maintain GSP program

NCBFAA calls for U.S. to maintain GSP program    The country’s largest group of customs brokers and freight forwarders asked the Bush administration to seek a long-term renewal of the Generalized System of Preferences, a trade program that provides duty-free status on certain imports from 133 developing countries.
   “The delayed, sporadic and uncertain renewals of the past were very damaging to many U.S. businesses and counterproductive to the goals of the GSP program,” wrote Mary Jo Muoio, president of the Washington-based National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America, in a letter to the U.S. Trade Representative’s GSP Subcommittee.
   “The financial and administrative burdens created by lapses in the GSP program are a serious drain on individual companies and we hope you will utilize every resource to assure a timely renewal of the program,” she told the subcommittee.
   GSP was established by the 1974 Trade Act. Current congressional authorization of the program runs out on Dec. 31. In 2005, the United States imported $26.7 billion in products under the GSP program, an 18 percent increase over 2004.
   The USTR is considering whether to drop certain countries, such as India and Brazil, from GSP program. The NCBFAA president argued that these countries and the U.S. companies that rely on their imports aren’t ready for this type of change to GSP.
   “In fact, the least developed countries often lack the production capability as well as the infrastructure to become a reliable source for many products now sourced from Brazil, India or one of the other larger beneficiary countries,” Muoio said. “A decision to remove one of these countries is essentially a lose-lose proposition.”