International Trade Agreements Sample Clauses

International Trade Agreements. 9.2.1 The government procurement obligations of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization Agreement on Government Procurement do not apply to contracts awarded pursuant to Article 9 of this Agreement, provided that Déline Business Organizations qualify as “minority businesses” under these agreements.

International Trade Agreements. Contracts for the procurement of goods and services in the amount of $528,000 or more and for construction services in the amount of $7,443,000 or more are covered by an international trade agreement and are therefore not subject to Section 1605.

International Trade Agreements. A Brief History Internationally coordinated tariff reduction as a trade policy dates back to the 1930s. In 1930, the United States passed a remarkably irresponsible tariff law, the Xxxxx-Xxxxxx Act. Under this act, tariff rates rose steeply and U.S. trade fell sharply; some economists argue that the Xxxxx-Xxxxxx Act helped deepen the Great Depression. Within a few years after the act’s passage, the U.S. administration concluded that tariffs needed to be reduced, but this posed serious problems of political coalition building. Any tariff reduc- tion would be opposed by those members of Congress whose districts contained firms producing competing goods, while the benefits would be so widely diffused that few in Congress could be mobilized on the other side. To reduce tariff rates, tariff reduction needed to be linked to some concrete benefits for exporters. The initial solution to this political problem was bilateral tariff negotiations. The United States would approach some country that was a major exporter of some good—say, a sugar exporter—and offer to lower tariffs on sugar if that country would lower its tariffs on some U.S. exports. The attractiveness of the deal to U.S. exporters would help counter the political weight of the sugar interest. In the foreign country, the attractiveness of the deal to foreign sugar exporters would balance the political influence of import-competing interests. Such bilat- eral negotiations helped reduce the average duty on U.S. imports from 59 percent in 1932 to 25 percent shortly after World War II. Bilateral negotiations, however, do not take full advantage of international coordination. For one thing, benefits from a bilateral negotiation may “spill over” to countries that have not made any concessions. For example, if the United States reduces tariffs on coffee as a result of a deal with Brazil, Colombia will also gain from a higher world coffee price. Furthermore, some advantageous deals may inherently involve more than two countries: The United States sells more to Europe, Europe sells more to Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia sells more to Japan, and Japan sells more to the United States. Thus the next step in international trade liberalization was to proceed to multilateral negotiations involving a number of countries. Multilateral negotiations began soon after the end of World War II. Originally diplomats from the victorious Allies imagined that such negotiations would take place under the aus- pices of a proposed body ...