On October 30, Trump signed Presidential Proclamation 9813 to implement the final results of the United States Trade Representative’s 2017-18 annual Generalized System of Preferences review. The office of the USTR denied nearly all requests for waivers, resulting in the removal from GSP eligibility of nearly all country-product pairs that exceeded the annual import limits.

Changes made to the tariff schedule from the proclamation will take effect on November. 1.

USTR published a list containing six separate categories enumerated as roman numeral I through VI, which outlines the results of their annual review, summarized as follows:

All petitions to add new products to the GSP program were denied (USTR List I).

One of the changes involve USTR’s granting of a petition to remove cherry juice from Turkey from GSP eligibility, resulting in a new 8-digit subheading 2009.89.65 created with the special program indicator “A*”. The former subheading 2009.89.60 for “other” fruit juice is deleted, and a new subheading 2009.89.70 is created for “other” fruit juice besides cherry juice. Another petition to remove non-adhesive plates, sheets, film, foil and strip of polymethyl methacrylate under subheading 3920.51.50 from GSP eligibility for Indonesia and Thailand was denied (USTR List II).

Only one petition for ammonium perrhenate under subheading 2841.90.20 from Kazakhstan was granted to re-designate a country-product pair as being eligible for GSP (USTR List III)

USTR did grant some petitions for waivers from competitive need limitations (CNL) to allow those products to continue to be eligible for GSP despite exceeding the annual import limits (USTR List V). The petitions granted were for 0410.00.00 edible products of animal origin from Indonesia; 2836.91.00 lithium carbonates from Argentina; and 7202.50.00 ferrosilicon chromium from Kazakhstan. The remaining petitions were denied.

In addition, all requests for de minimis waivers were denied by USTR (USTR List VI). De minimis waivers are usually granted in cases where a single country exceeds import limits, but where overall imports of the product from all countries fall below a specified limit. Detailed reasons for the denials were not included in the proclamation or USTR’s notice.