Common Contracts

WTO Agreement Reached on Tariff-Cutting Deal for Information Technology Products

Wto Agreement • August 3rd, 2015

• Contract Type
  Wto Agreement
• Filed
  August 3rd, 2015

On July 24, members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) announced that they had reached a tentative deal to expand duty-free treatment under the Information Technology Agreement (“ITA”). The ITA, originally reached in 1996, is now set to cut tariffs on 201 additional products, including multi- component integrated circuits, GPS navigation systems, medical devices, software media, machine tools for manufacturing printed circuits, telecommunications satellites, and touch screens. Per WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo, “[a]nnual trade in these 201 products is valued at over $1.3 trillion per year, and accounts for approximately 7% of total global trade today.”