WASHINGTON-The United States and Asia-Pacific nations are progressing toward an accord to eliminate tariffs on wireless telecommunications equipment and information technology products by 2000.
U.S. trade officials met with their counterparts from 17 other member nations of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, Aug. 21-23, in Davao, the Philippines, to work on the Information Technology Agreement.
U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky, wants to wrap up multilateral negotiations on the ITA before the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting in December in Singapore, with an eye to start reducing tariffs on ITA products next year.
“I thought it went well,” said a senior U.S. trade official who participated in the APEC meeting late last month. The USTR official noted that talks revolved around implementation of the accord rather than the merits of ITA itself, which he called a good sign.
Further talks on ITA continue early next month in Geneva and Oct. 18-20 in Manila. Ministerial level negotiations will be held Nov. 22-23 at Subic Bay, the Philippines, followed by an APEC summit with heads of state Nov. 25 in Manila.
At the U.S.-European Union summit last December, President Clinton agreed to pursue the ITA in talks with then-Spain Prime Minister Gonzalez (serving as EU president) and President Santer of the European Commission. Following that, at an April 19 meeting in Kobe, Japan, trade officials from the United States, Japan, Canada and the EU voiced support for the ITA and agreed to begin negotiations.
While the ITA deals strictly with tariffs, APEC nations want to establish free trade (which would entail eliminating non-tariff barriers) in the Asia-Pacific region early next century. Industrialized countries of APEC want to get there by 2010, and developing countries by 2020.
Still before APEC are a number of unresolved issues on the ITA. For example, there is disagreement over what products should be covered by the technology accord.
The United States believes ITA should include telecommunications equipment (including radio-based network facilities), computer hardware and software, semiconductors and semiconductor manufacturing equipment and electronic components.
Some countries argue the ITA list is too broad and telephone switches, for example, should be precluded. Others want to expand ITA to include consumer electronics.
APEC includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and the United States.
An ITA for the Asia-Pacific region could help the United States’ bargaining position as it attempts to get the EU-some of whose 15 member countries maintain high information technology tariffs-to sign onto ITA.
There already is pressure from EU member nations to erase tariffs, the USTR official added.
“An ITA will help business and consumers to move decisively into the Information Age by lowering costs, improving productivity, improving the speed and accuracy of information exchange, increasing the visibility of new business and consumer services and promoting interregional industry cooperation,” stated USTR. “Thus, it is important to eliminate tariffs and thereby eliminate what is in essence a tax on information, competitiveness and productivity.”
