FTA Tariff Tool

By: www.blogger.com

Quick, what's the tariff
on furniture in Chile?

The U.S. Government has launched a new on-line tool that will be welcome news to many exporters and importers. Announced last Wednesday, the FTA Tariff Tool provides easy access to tariff rates and much other information for exports and imports under the 17 free trade agreements the United States has signed and implemented. It also gives you information about the tariffs your products are likely to face (or no longer will face) under the three FTAs still in limbo in Washington: South Korea, Panama and Colombia. For instance, I checked on duties for file cabinets in South Korea and the tool tells me that those duties will go to zero immediately when the U.S.-Korea FTA is implemented. Other duties may take several years to come down, depending on what was negotiated. But the tool shows you when they will come down, how quickly, and what they will be in each year of the agreement. Good info.

In case you haven’t memorized the list, the countries with which the United States presently has free trade agreements are Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Israel, Jordan, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Oman, Peru and Singapore. For each of these, the FTA Tariff Tool can also show you how trade in your industry has changed with these markets since the advent of the FTA. For example, Chile had a 6% customs duty on furniture before we negotiated our FTA with the Andean nation. U.S. furniture exporters sold $10,592,601 to Chilean customers in 2006. Our furniture exports to Chile, which now enter duty-free, grew to $25,157,386 by 2010. A 137% increase for an industry that many Americans think is dead and gone to China. Not too shabby!

Check out your products in the FTA Tariff Tool. But be careful. You may find yourself hungry for more free trade agreements – something that may surprise your local congressman.

I just hope the FTA Tariff Tool is expanded soon to cover all of our non-FTA markets. Great tool for business.