US Senate OKs trade package for companies, nations
WASHINGTON, Nov 19 (Reuters) – The Senate gave final congressional
approval on Friday to legislation that eliminates tariffs on a long
list of industrial products and doles out trade benefits to Laos,
Armenia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The package also ends a dispute with the European Union by repealing
the 1916 Anti-Dumping Act, which Brussels had successfully challenged
at the World Trade Organization. However, the United States can still
impose anti-dumping duties on what it deems unfairly traded products
under different legislation.
At the heart of the Miscellaneous Trade and Technical Corrections Act
are tariff cuts for hundreds of chemical and industrial products not
made in the United States.
The House of Representatives has already the approved legislation
and President George W. Bush is expected to sign it.
“This bill supports American workers and factories by allowing
manufacturers to save money when they import these products,” said
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican,
during floor debate.
Congress usually passes a similar bill without controversy every two
years. However, lawmakers failed to do that at the end of 2002 and
the bill has been delayed by internal Senate politics ever since then.
The bill also extends normal trade relations to Laos, one of only a
few countries that does not currently enjoy that status. The change
will reduce the average U.S. tariff on Laos products to 2.4 percent
from 45 percent currently.
Russ Feingold and Herbert Kohl, Democratic senators from Wisconsin,
strongly objected to that provision on human rights ground.
Wisconsin is home to a large number of Hmong, a Laotian ethnic group
that helped the United States during the Vietnam War and fled the
country afterward.
The bill also extends permanent normal trade relations to Armenia,
a former Soviet republic. Unlike Laos, it has had normal trade
relations with the United States on an annual renewable basis. However,
Armenia’s recent entry into the WTO requires Washington to make the
status permanent.
Another section allows Bush to waive import duties on hand-knotted
and hand-woven carpet. That provision is aimed at helping Pakistan
and Afghanistan, two allies “in the fight against global terror,”
Grassley said.
The measure also strengthens Bush’s authority to bar imports of looted
Iraqi antiquities.
Archeologists and Iraqi museum curators have bemoaned a sharp increase
in activity by tomb raiders and temple thieves in the chaos that
followed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
11/19/04 21:42 ET
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress