In a Presidential Proclamation published in the Federal Register on July 5, 2012, President Obama made several changes to the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), including the termination of Gibraltar and Turks and Caicos Islands as beneficiaries, the designation of the Republic of Senegal as a least-developed beneficiary for GSP purposes, and the re-designation of articles eligible under GSP due to competitive need limitations (CNLs).
The GSP program provides for the duty-free importation of designated articles when imported from beneficiary developing countries (BDCs). However when the President determines that a BDC has exported to the United States during a calendar year either (1) a quantity of a GSP-eligible article having a value in excess of the applicable amount for that year ($150 million for 2011),, or (2) a quantity of a GSP-eligible article having a value equal to or greater than 50 percent of the value of total U.S. imports of the article from all countries, the President must terminate GSP duty-free treatment for that article from that BDC by no later than July 1 of the next calendar year, unless a waiver is granted.
The Proclamation includes the following country-product pairs:
- Tariff 2921.19.60 for the Philippines
- Tariff 3307.41.00 for India
- Tariff 4015.19.10 and 8415.90.80 for Thailand
The termination of Gibraltar and Turks and Caicos Islands as GSP beneficiaries is effective on January 1, 2014. The modifications to the HTS listed in the Proclamation's Annexes I - IV became effective on July 1, 2012.
View the full text of the proclamation and annexes online:
