House Passes Miscellaneous Trade and Technical Corrections Act of 2003
The United States House of Representatives recently passed H.R. 3521, a bill that would make permanent normal trade relations with Armenia and make hundreds of technical corrections to U.S. trade laws. The Miscellaneous Trade and Technical Corrections Act of 2003, which is part of an omnibus tax bill, would give Armenia permanent normal trade relations by permanently waiving the Jackson-Vanik requirement of having normal trade relations subject to annual review. Total United States-Armenia bilateral trade for 2002 amounted to more than $134,200,000.
The measure would also make a number of technical corrections to U.S. trade laws and would suspend tariffs on a number of products not produced domestically and traded in small volume.
Absent from the bill was a provision that would have created "qualifed industrial zones" (QIZs) in Turkey that would permit certain goods produced jointly by Turkish and Israeli manufacturers to enter the U.S. market duty free. The QIZ provision was in the version of the miscellanerous tariffs bill passed by the House in 2002, but the Senate never considered such legislation before that session of Congress adjourned. It is not clear whether the Senate will consider this bill prior to the Christmas recess.
|posted by Douglas N. Jacobson| Permalink 
