The Office of the United States TradeRepresentative Home / Document Library / Press Releases / 2008 / March / 03/27/2008 | Bush Administration Submits Annual Trade Report to Congress Bush Administration Submits Annual Trade Report to Congress03/28/2008 Washington, D.C. – The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) today announced the release of its 2008 National Trade Estimate Report (NTE). The NTE report describes significant barriers to U.S. trade and investment, as well as the actions taken by USTR to address those barriers.In 2007, USTR worked with four key trading partners on free trade agreements (FTAs) that will give U.S. goods and services significantly improved access to the markets of Peru, Colombia, Panama and South Korea. The vast majority of products from Peru, Colombia and Panama already have virtually duty-free access to the U.S. market under existing trade preference programs.“In 2007, Congress enacted legislation to approve and implement our landmark FTA with Peru. We are actively working with Congress to enact legislation for the other three FTAs,” U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab said. “Approval and entry into force of these pending FTAs will make American goods and services more competitive in these markets, and more competitive relative to other trading partners.“At the same time that we were negotiating new agreements, USTR was actively enforcing the agreements we already have,” Ambassador Schwab said. “We filed a number of very strong cases with the World Trade Organization (WTO) to combat barriers to the free and fair trade of American goods and services, including four cases against China in the past 14 months.”The NTE report, delivered to Congress on March 28 lays out the successes and ongoing challenges to free and open trade for American goods and services. The report discusses the Administration’s efforts to eliminate trade barriers and unfair trade practices for American workers who produce and export industrial goods, agricultural products and services to the 62 major trading partners covered in the report.Successes for the Administration, American workers, and small and medium sized businesses in 2007 as reported in the 2008 NTE include:• Signed FTAs under Trade Promotion Authority. By the end of June 2007, the United States signed agreements with Panama and South Korea and amended our FTAs with Peru and Colombia. In the case of agriculture, for example, these FTAs have the potential to generate over$3 billion annually in additional farm exports when fully implemented.• Approval of FTA with Peru. The Administration worked with Congress on a bipartisan basis onthe approval of the United States-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement.• Launched WTO cases against China. In 2007, USTR initiated WTO disputes challenging Chinese export and import substitution subsidies that are prohibited by WTO rules, China’s inadequate enforcement regime for intellectual property rights and China’s market access barriers to U.S. industries exporting and distributing publications, home entertainment videos, music and movies. Agreement was reached in November to resolve the case on prohibited subsidies, when China committed to eliminate the subsidies at issue effective January 1, 2008. Together with the case on financial information services that we launched in March 2008, this brings the total number of cases filed against China to six since March 2004, when we filed the first-ever case against China at the WTO.• Worked to ensure full implementation of trade agreements. To ensure that the United States obtains the full benefits of its trade agreements, we conducted meetings with our trading partnersto closely monitor implementation of these agreements. U.S. trading partners addressed a range of issues raised by U.S. officials in connection with our reviews of bilateral and regional FTAs, Trade and Investment Framework Agreements (TIFAs) and other trade dialogues, including thoserelated to agriculture, investment, intellectual property and customs.• Pursued successful conclusion of the Doha Round of trade talks in the WTO. A successful WTO Doha Round outcome is the top U.S. trade priority. The Round offers the potential to eliminate or significantly reduce trade barriers. The talks cover a broad range of topics includingagriculture; industrial market access; services; rules; trade facilitation; and development. A multilateral agreement in the WTO offers the potential to generate economic growth here and around the world, and to help lift millions out of poverty.• Proposed expanded market access for environmental goods and services. In 2007 the United States, together with the European Communities, submitted a ground-breaking proposal as part of the WTO Doha Round negotiations to reduce international barriers to trade in environmental goods and services, including in important “climate-friendly” technologies such as clean coal, wind energy and solar cells. The proposal lays a foundation for an innovative new WTO environmental goods and services agreement (EGSA).• Expanded opportunities in Japan for U.S. finance and insurance products. Japan’s insurance and financial markets are among the largest in the world and an important marketplace for U.S. financial and insurance products. Japan’s citizens now have more options when it comes to insurance after all limits were lifted last year on the types of insurance products that U.S. insurerscan sell through banks in Japan. Japan’s Government has also reaffirmed that recently privatizedJapan Post financial businesses will operate with the same obligations and standards as those of U.S. and other private financial institutions. We will continue to monitor the privatization process of Japan Post to ensure transparency and fairness in the Japanese marketplace.• Strengthened intellectual property rights (IPR) laws and enforcement around the globe. The three pending FTAs all contain world-class IPR provisions, and FTA partner countries such asthe Dominican Republic and Oman overhauled their IPR laws as part of the FTA process. Some other examples of progress include actions against signal theft in Vietnam; raids of unlicensed optical disk plants in Russia; implementation of measures to reduce end-user software piracy andan agreement to strengthen enforcement against company name misuse in China; prosecutions for business software piracy in Taiwan;
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