U.S. officials often call the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Doha Development Agenda or "Round" of global trade talks, launched in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001, a "once in a generation opportunity" to expand trade. President Bush has identified their success as his administration's top trade priority. Due to various U.S. notification and consultation requirements, concluding the negotiations in...

Every year, U.S.-based multinational corporations transfer hundreds of billions of dollars of goods and services between their affiliates in the United States and their foreign subsidiaries. Such transactions may be a part of normal business operations for corporations with foreign subsidiaries. However, it is generally recognized that given the variation in corporate tax rates across countries, a...

Trade ministers from 146 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), representing 93 percent of global commerce, convened in Cancun, Mexico, in September 2003. Their goal was to provide direction for ongoing trade negotiations involving a broad set of issues that included agriculture, nonagricultural market access, services, and special treatment for developing countries. These negotiations, pa...

China's December 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) signified that the world's seventh largest economy and the United State's fourth largest trading partner would be subject to the multilateral organization's trade liberalizing requirements. China's accession agreement is a set of legal documents totaling more than 800 pages. In order to fulfill its WTO commitments, China will ha...

In November 2001, the World Trade Organization launched a new set of multilateral negotiations at its ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar. The ministerial conference was important because it laid out an ambitious agenda for a broad set of new multilateral trade negotiations, set forth in the Doha Ministerial Declaration. The declaration calls for a continuation of discussions on liberalizing tra...

Both the United States and the European Union (EU) began providing trade preferences to eligible developing countries in the early 1970s. These trade preferences, which reduced tariffs and product quotas, are "nonreciprocal," meaning that beneficiaries need not reciprocate with lower tariffs for donor export countries. This report discusses (1) the volume of U.S. and EU nonreciprocal preferential...

GAO followed up on its previous report on the status of China's World Trade Organization (WTO) membership negotiations, focusing on the: (1) results of the November 1999 bilateral Agreement on Market Access between China and the United States; and (2) status of China's ongoing multilateral negotiations in the WTO.GAO noted that: (1) in a November 1999 bilateral agreement with China, U.S. and Chine...

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on: (1) the tariff reductions negotiated and provisions for creation of a private dispute settlement mechanism for Florida fruit and vegetable products under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); (2) safeguard provisions available to U.S. producers; (3) U.S. antidumping and countervailing duty remedies available to combat oth...

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on: (1) the arrangement agreed to in the Uruguay Round for an increased allocation of cheese to U.S. importers and the effect of this arrangement on the U.S. dairy industry; (2) U.S. trade remedies that are available to protect the dairy sector and the extent to which they have been applied to cheese imports; (3) the operations of one s...

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the activities of other countries' agricultural state trading enterprises (STE), focusing on: (1) General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) members' reporting of STE activities from 1980 to 1994; (2) Uruguay Round commitments relating to STE; (3) the potential increase of STE under GATT and the World Trade Organization (WTO); and (4) U.S. effor...