Domestic Industry Group Argues for Dramatic Rewrite of GSP

The Coalition for a Prosperous America, a group allied with the Trump approach to trade, wrote to the heads of the Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee to argue that a clean renewal of the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program neither serves American economic interests nor furthers economic development in eligible countries. “The primary advocates for GSP are foreign countries, importers and multinationals seeking to buy the lowest priced products from the lowest wage countries,” the CPA wrote Oct 15. “Those interests are trying to avoid buying from American suppliers who hire American workers and comply with American labor and environmental laws.”

“The United States can no longer afford to sacrifice our industries to vague and unproven notions of trade leading to development elsewhere. GSP should exclude products and services that Americans engage in or should engage in producing as we pivot to an industrial growth strategy,” they wrote.

Their suggested changes to the legislation include:

• Remove 48 countries from the eligibility list because the U.S. Labor Department has identified forced or child labor within their borders.
• Remove all countries that are not least-developed countries, which would mean removing all five of the biggest exporters in the program: Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and South Africa.
• Require that any country in a free trade agreement that lowers tariffs offer those same tariffs to the U.S.
• Tighten rules of origin for goods exported under GSP.
• Remove all products made from base metals, that are machinery, electrical parts, parts for vehicles, and “miscellaneous manufactured articles” in Chapter 94 of the tariff code.