National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC)

Climate Change

Summary: This analysis demonstrates that U.S. domestic energy and climate change policy must be addressed from a global perspective, and proposes ways to ensure that U.S. policies are consistent with international trade law.

Economy

Summary: This guide is meant to serve as a resource for legislators who want to better understand the basis and substance of U.S. international trade policy, what role individual states can play in developing those policies, and how best to position their state to benefit from international trade.  It is also meant to set the record straight in response to unsubstantiated claims about the negative effects of international trade agreements on states.  

Trade

Summary: This report, Parts One and Two of the NFTC’s Foreign Income Project, offers the NFTC’s analysis of the principal tax policy considerations that have shaped the development of our recommendations for the modernization and reform of subpart F and the foreign tax credit.

Summary: When the economic history of the 1990s is written, the accelerating trend towards the globalization of business enterprises will figure prominently. Manufacturing, service, natural resource, and even utility companies compete in markets and locate production in jurisdictions other than that in which their public parent is chartered with far greater frequency today than even 10 years ago, let alone nearly 40 years ago when subpart F was first enacted. This report is not designed to be an exhaustive, academic review. Its intended audience includes many persons who may not be steeped in the arcane rules and esoteric vocabulary of either international tax law or international tax economics.

Summary: This paper discusses the NFTC’s support of the mandate in the Doha Ministerial Declaration to clarify and improve antidumping disciplines as a principal objective of the Doha Development Agenda (“Doha”).  In pursuit of this objective, and as the most appropriate and effective means of bridging existing differences among participants in the Rules component of the Doha negotiations, the NFTC recommends that WTO Members simplify and streamline the WTO Agreement on Antidumping (AoA) and establish an Experts Group process for creating model instruments and improving the capacity of developing countries to implement their WTO commitments on antidumping rules. 

Summary: This is the third in a series of studies prepared by the National Foreign Trade Council as part of its Trade and Risk Regulation Project.  The goal of the project has been to examine the growing use of disguised regulatory trade barriers that have the effect of denying market access to foreign products. In addition to discussing the impact of such measures on industrialized nations’ technologically advanced and processed exports, these studies have also focused on lower priced, natural resource driven agricultural and industrial commodity exports of developing countries. These studies are intended to provoke discussion on a national and international level between industry and government about how to eliminate these unnecessary obstacles to trade.  They are also intended to encourage serious global consideration of how best to reduce the impact of these measures on the developing and least developed countries for whose benefit the Doha Trade Round negotiations were largely begun.

Summary: The foreign competition faced by American companies has intensified as the globalization of business has accelerated. At the same time, American multi-nationals increasingly voice their conviction that the Internal Revenue Code places them at a competitive disadvantage in relation to multinationals based in other countries. In 1997, the NFTC launched an international tax policy review project, at least partly in response to this growing chorus of concern. The project is divided into three parts, the first dealing with the United States anti-deferral regime, subpart F**, and the second dealing with the foreign tax credit, together published as Volume I, and the third dealing with our conclusions and recommendations, published as Volume II.

Summary: This data reinforces the need for an ambitious approach to tariff reductions in the non-agricultural market access negotiations.  Manufactured goods and services make up more than 95% of the value of global trade.  It is in the interest of all countries to eliminate obstacles to sectors and products, which are the engine of global economic growth, and to provide increased export opportunities for their manufacturers.

Summary: This paper discusses why opening up global trade and investment in services must be a cornerstone of any successfully completed Doha Development Agenda (DDA). An ambitious outcome on services can provide a major impetus for – and form an essential complement to - equally ambitious negotiated outcomes in agriculture and industrial goods. The Doha Round offers a unique opportunity to lock-in the far-reaching liberalization of services markets that has been achieved worldwide during the past decade and to open up new sectors to competition in a progressive manner. 

Summary: Facing ever-increasing global competition, corporations must understand the consequences of investment overseas and accurately gauge the costs associated with it.   In order to plug into the global supply and value chain effectively, corporations must work (or not work) in tandem with governments that either promote or dissuade such investment. Often, they must weigh alternatives when some government policies promote investment and others discourage it.  They must also take into account the cost of connecting to the global economy in terms of factors such as shipping costs, time to clear customs, port of entry fees, corruption, time associated with enforcing contracts, cost of licensing and documentation and so on.  This study seeks to capture some of these factors through an analytical model that considers six different factors that reflect such considerations in light of supply and value chain management.