Sept 15 -- The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), through the Trade Policy Staff Committee (TPSC), publishes the National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers (NTE Report) each year. USTR invites comments by October 26, 2021 to assist it and the TPSC in identifying significant barriers to U.S. exports of goods and services, U.S. foreign direct investment, and the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights for inclusion in the NTE Report.
To assist USTR in preparing the NTE Report, commenters should submit information related to one or more of the following categories of foreign trade barriers:
1. Import policies. Examples include tariffs and other import charges, quantitative restrictions, import licensing, pre-shipment inspection, customs barriers and shortcomings in trade facilitation or in valuation Start Printed Page 51437practices, and other market access barriers.
2. Technical barriers to trade. Examples include unnecessarily trade restrictive or discriminatory standards, conformity assessment procedures, labeling, or technical regulations, including unnecessary or discriminatory technical regulations or standards for telecommunications products.
3. Sanitary and phytosanitary measures. Examples include measures applied to protect food safety, or animal and plant life or health that are unnecessarily trade restrictive, discriminatory, or not based on scientific evidence.
4. Government procurement restrictions. Examples include closed bidding and bidding processes that lack transparency.
5. Intellectual property protection. Examples include inadequate patent, copyright, and trademark regimes, trade secret theft, and inadequate enforcement of intellectual property rights.
6. Services. Examples include prohibitions or restrictions on foreign participation in the market, discriminatory licensing requirements or standards, local-presence requirements, and unreasonable restrictions on what services may be offered.
7. Digital trade and electronic commerce. Examples include barriers to cross-border data flows, including data localization requirements, discriminatory practices affecting trade in digital products, restrictions on the provision of internet-enabled services, and other restrictive technology requirements.
8. Investment. Examples include limitations on foreign equity participation and on access to foreign government-funded research and development programs, local content requirements, technology transfer requirements and export performance requirements, and restrictions on repatriation of earnings, capital, fees, and royalties.
9. Subsidies, especially export subsidies and local content subsidies. Examples of export subsidies include subsidies contingent upon export performance, and agricultural export subsidies that displace U.S. exports in third country markets. Examples of local content subsidies include subsidies contingent on the purchase or use of domestic rather than imported goods.
10. Competition. Examples include government-tolerated anticompetitive conduct of state-owned or private firms that restricts the sale or purchase of U.S. goods or services in the foreign country's markets or abuse of competition laws to inhibit trade; fairness and due process concerns by companies involved in competition investigatory and enforcement proceedings in the country.
11. State-owned enterprises. Examples include subsidies to and from industrial state-owned enterprises involved in the manufacture or production of non-agricultural goods or in the provision of services, as well as industrial state-owned enterprises that could contribute to overcapacity, or discriminating against foreign goods or services, acting inconsistently with commercial considerations in the purchase and sale of goods and services in cases in which these polices constitute significant barriers to, or distortions of, U.S. exports of goods and services, U.S. investment, or U.S. electronic commerce, which may negatively affect U.S. firms and workers.
12. Labor. Examples include concerns with failures by a government to protect internationally recognized worker rights, including through failures to eliminate forced labor, or failures to eliminate discrimination in respect of employment or occupation, in cases where these failures influence trade flows or investment decisions in ways that constitute significant barriers to, or distortions of, U.S. exports of goods and services, U.S. investment, or U.S. electronic commerce, which may negatively affect U.S. firms and workers. Internationally recognized worker rights include the right of association; the right to organize and bargain collectively; a prohibition on the use of any form of forced or compulsory labor; a minimum age for the employment of children, and a prohibition on the worst forms of child labor; and acceptable conditions of work with respect to minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health.
13. Environment. Examples include concerns with a government's levels of environmental protection, unsustainable stewardship of natural resources, and harmful environmental practices that constitute significant barriers to, or distortions of, U.S. exports of goods and services, U.S. investment, or U.S. electronic commerce, which may negatively affect U.S. firms and workers.
14. Other barriers. Examples include barriers that encompass more than one category, such as bribery and corruption, or that affect a single sector.
FR notice requesting comments:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/09/15/2021-19934/request-for-comments-on-significant-foreign-trade-barriers-for-the-national-trade-estimate-report