The U.S. House of Representatives voted to extend trade preferences for exporters from developing nations such as India, Thailand and Colombia, sending the measure to the Senate, where it faces opposition.
The House passed by voice vote a measure proposed by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander Levin, D-Mich., that also would continue aid to workers who lose their jobs because of overseas competition and eliminate duties on an array of products not manufactured in the U.S.
“Manufacturers large and small use the tariff-suspension provisions to obtain raw materials, propriety inputs and other products that are not available in our nation,” John Engler, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, said in a statement before the vote.
The measure faces challenges in the Senate, where Republican Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Charles Grassley of Iowa object to different provisions. In the past these tariff measures, which are periodically renewed, have passed only when they receive overwhelming support.
The U.S. lets more than 120 developing nations export many of their products duty-free. Those exemptions are crucial to spurring growth and development in developing nations and to corporate profits, according to companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., CVS Caremark Corp. and Dole Food Co.
Jewelry, Flowers
Without an extension of the trade preferences for poor nations, jewelry from India and flowers from Colombia will face duties of as much as 20 percent. Total imports under the program, known as the Generalized System of Preferences, were more than $20 billion last year, down from more than $30 billion in 2008.
The measure also would waive duties on products such as plasma televisions and Christmas-tree lights that aren’t made in the U.S.
Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance panel, is holding up the Trade Adjustment Assistance program for U.S. workers harmed by foreign competition, said Jill Gerber, a spokeswoman for the senator. He wants the Labor Department to delay regulations barring states from hiring outside contractors to administer the aid, Gerber said. The trade assistance extension is in Levin’s bill.
Sessions is holding up the measure on trade preferences, which expire at the end of the year, saying tariff-free imports of sleeping bags from Bangladesh may put a manufacturer in his state out of business.
The U.S.-made sleeping bags are manufactured by Exxel Outdoors Inc., which has 68 employees at its factory in Haleyville, Alabama. Those jobs are at risk unless duty-free benefits for its Bangladeshi competitors are ended, Harry Kazazian, Exxel’s chief executive officer, said in an interview.
Kazazian has enlisted the support of Sessions, who had threatened to block the preference program unless Bangladesh’s sleeping bags are removed from the list of duty-free items.
Levin’s measure is H.R. 6517.
