World trade negotiators seeking to eliminate tariffs on IT products agreed over the weekend to expand the list on which tariffs would be dropped to about 200 products with an annual trade value of some $1 trillion.
Participants said the 54 nations had struck a tentative deal to expand to about 200 the IT products on which tariffs would be dropped. The list had an annual trade value of some $1 trillion, the World Trade Organisation said late on Saturday. The United States, China, Japan and others had been meeting at a European Union mission in Geneva and aimed to finalize the so-called Information Technology Agreement by Friday. The US Trade Representative, Michael Froman, called the deal a “major breakthrough” in talks, while WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo tweeted there was a “basis for an agreement,” adding he was “very optimistic that we’ll have a final successful deal by the end of next week.
Products on the list include semiconductors, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, global positioning system (GPS) devices, loudspeakers and video game consoles.
