Helping American producers sell more Made in America products abroad.
The United States ships more than $1.9 billion in goods to TPP countries every day. In TPP, the United States is working to build on those exports by negotiating comprehensive and preferential access across an expansive, duty-free trading region for the industrial goods, food and agriculture products, and textiles, which will allow our exporters to develop and expand their participation in the value chains of the fastest-growing economies in the world.
The United States exported more than $622.5 billion of manufactured products to TPP countries in 2013. With the elimination of TPP countries’ tariffs on manufactured products, including innovative and high technology products, such as industrial and electrical machinery, precision and scientific instruments, and chemicals and plastics, U.S. products will compete on a more level playing field with goods from TPP countries’ other free trade agreement (FTA) partners – including China, India, and the EU. As just one example, certain U.S. auto parts currently face a 27-percent tariff entering Vietnam. Meanwhile, countries that have an FTA with Vietnam, such as China, Thailand, and Indonesia, export their auto parts to Vietnam tariff free. By eliminating tariffs U.S. auto parts companies face, TPP would help boost America’s competitiveness in the Vietnamese market.
Twenty percent of U.S. farm income comes from agricultural exports and those exports support rural communities. In fact, U.S. food and agricultural exports to the world reached an all-time high in 2013 of over $148 billion. Of that total, we exported more than $58 billion to TPP countries – a figure that would increase as a result of tariff elimination under TPP. As just one example: U.S. poultry currently faces a 40-percent tariff in Malaysia. U.S. poultry would become more affordable in Malaysia under a TPP Agreement that reduces these tariffs to zero.
OBJECTIVES
- Support American jobs.
- Eliminate tariffs on trade between each TPP country and the United States on the broadest possible basis, taking into account the need to obtain competitive opportunities for U.S. exports while addressing U.S. import sensitivities. This includes eliminating tariffs on U.S. manufactured goods as well as on most agricultural products.
- Achieve new and commercially meaningful market access through significant tariff reductions and preferential tariff rate quotas for the remaining products.
- Address non-tariff barriers to U.S. exports, including discriminatory barriers on agricultural and other products, restrictive administration of tariff-rate quotas, unjustified trade restrictions, or other measures that unfairly limit access to markets for U.S. goods.
- Obtain full reciprocal access to TPP country markets and more open conditions of trade for U.S. textile and apparel products (see more detail in the Textiles section of this summary).
- Establish disciplines on State-owned enterprises to enhance transparency and eliminate market distortions (see more detail in the SOE section of this summary).
- Reaffirm and build on WTO commitments on technical barriers to trade (TBT) (see more detail in TBT section of this summary).
- Reaffirm and build on WTO commitments on sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) (see more detail in SPS section of this summary).
- Ensure that no commitments would require changes to U.S. antidumping and countervailing duty laws and practices or diminish the U.S. ability to effectively enforce those laws.
RESOURCES
For more information on industrial and manufacturing trade, visit WWW.USTR.GOV/ISSUE-AREAS/INDUSTRYMANUFACTURING
For more information on agricultural trade, visit WWW.USTR.GOV/ISSUE-AREAS/AGRICULTURE
For more information on the economy and trade, visit WWW.USTR.GOV/ISSUE-AREAS/ECONOMY-TRADE
