President Issues Proclamation on AGOA III, GSP for Iraq, Etc

On September 7, 2004, President Bush signed Proclamation 7808 which makes various changes to the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) with respect to: the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Acceleration Act of 2004 (AGOA III), the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

These HTS changes include:

• designating Iraq as a GSP beneficiary developing country (effective for goods entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption on or after 15 days after September 7, 2004)
• removing GSP eligibility for HTS 8108.90.60 products from Russia (effective on or after the sixtieth day after September 7, 2004)
• modifying various AGOA sections in the HTS to provide for certain AGOA III provisions (effective for goods entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption, on or after July 13, 2004)
• modifying certain NAFTA Rules of Origin for automatic data processing machines, etc. (effective for goods entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption on or after January 1, 2003)

This is Part I of a multi-part series of summaries of the HTS changes made by this proclamation. See future issues of ITT for more detailed summaries.

(See ITT's Online Archives or 08/02/04 news 04080205 and 08/04/04 news, 04080405 for BP summaries of U.S. Customs and Border Protection's (CBP's) instructions on the textile and apparel changes made by AGOA III (including filing claims for new AGOA III benefits, and requesting retroactive AGOA II and AGOA III benefits). See ITT's Online Archives or 07/14/04 news, 04071405 for BP summary of the President signing AGOA III into law on July 13, 2004.)

Proclamation 7808 (FR Pub 09/09/04) available at http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/06jun20041800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2004/pdf/04-20551.pdf