New WTO Trade Deal Will Exempt IT-Related Products From Import Tariffs

itwbennett writes: Under an agreement finalized Wednesday that applies to all 192 member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO), tariffs on imports of consumer electronics will be phased out over 7 years starting in July 2016. The agreement affects around 10 percent of the world trade in information and communications technology products and will eliminate around $50 billion in tariffs annually, according to IT industry lobby group DigitalEurope. It expects a $190 billion boost to global GDP from the changes.

Re:

[The New Guy 2.0]

American tech metal (copper) designers are faced with know-nothings in the front office... they confuse customers about the price of gold (you don't pay the "spot price", you pay the "CEA price" when you're making copper for electronics) among other things. I caught one I was working for that didn't write a valid quote for months because gold moved, and their calculation didn't.

Re:

[Tailhook]

Why

No EPA/OSHA/NLRB/EEOC/etc. We all know this. We all indulge the big lie, burnishing our morals by feathering our own regulatory nest while isolating ourselves from both the costs and the damage.

Don't worry everyone...

[ADRA]

This will clearly help the world redistribute wealth into everyone's pockets...

Re:Don't worry everyone...

[Anonymous Coward]

Organizations like WTO, WIPO, and the UN along with treaties like NAFTA, TPP, TTIP, and dozens of others aren't so much about redistribution of wealth (that's a secondary goal) as they are a means of removing decision-making power (ie. Sovereignty) from nations.

Take a look at the details of any of these deals and you'll see that they all override the laws of the nations that foolishly sign on. Once a nation can no longer write laws, what are they left with?

All courtesy of the the megalomaniacal globalist elite who keep pushing for their one world government.

YAY!!

[dasgoober]

Cheap Chinese routers for everybody!

Re:

[currently_awake]

You don't understand how this works. Tariff free doesn't mean the retail price of stuff drops, it means the company selling it pays less tax and therefore makes more profit.

WTO Sucks!

[GerryGilmore]

There has never been a worse trade agreement ever signed by America. Sure, it's been fantastic for the Asian countries but - being an American - you'll excuse me for putting my country's interest first. Let's look at the results: destruction of American manufacturing; elimination of decent middle-class wages; tremendous profitability for the elite "owners" (and don't give me the crap about how - since pension funds invest in mega-corps it benefits retirees when they do this) of said mega-corps; and....the complete abrogation of national sovereignty that it brings. How many of you know that the WTO can (and has) declared American laws "illegal" under the WTO agreement due to a loss of profit to int'l corps and the American citizen has had to either: change our laws or pony up taxpayer $$$ for the "fine". Yeah, tell me again how this is great for America.....

Governmental Spying

[The Raven]

The more IT equipment is traded between nations, the more they can all spy on each other with embedded malware and hidden backdoors. Makes complete sense.

And no, I don't wear a tinfoil hat, and this post is half joke, but only half... I'm sure that at least one NSA official nudged a bureaucrat somewhere that this would be good for national security.

$190 billion in global GDP

[rsilvergun]

Doesn't really matter much to me. The Tarrifs OTOH help protect local business and when there is no local business fund my gov't. I read somewhere that a bunch of well-to-do kids from the ivy league were surveyed about their thoughts on the economy and what came out was they were only concerned with growing the economy. They weren't evil or anything. They were just completely focused on growing the economy. If they did good in the process bully for me, if they did bad oh well. They weren't immoral, they were amoral.

In a lot of ways that's worse. It tells me that they're focused completely on the share of that growth they get. There's a name for that, rent seeking. There's a less cheerful name for it too, parasites...

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[e r]

There's a less cheerful name for it too, parasites...

1. I am absolutely not defending rich people who are assholes with what I'm about to say.
2. Anyone who takes government handouts when they could be working and earning their own living is a parasite too.

Both good and bad.

[Brostenen]

Well.... It all depends on a given sociaty, if this is good or bad. Yes, it is allways good for the customer and the seller. But for a given state? Now... If you have a country, like Denmark, were you get import charges slammed on top of everything (no exeption) sold at 11,5 US Dollars. Then this is good news. Good because you as a customer get's more choices, than the ones that can only be bought locally. This again makes a certain kind of poison, if you'r state is based on a wellfare system, that is loo

I doubt china will drop theirs

[WindBourne]

They have a large number of tariffs that they agreed to drop which they have not done so.

Where $190 Billion?

[nukenerd]

Without working through their figures, I have no doubt that they get to their staggering $190 billion "boost" by adding up the current tariffs around the world.

But that tariff money does not evaporate after payment, it goes into the economy of where it was paid. If you transfer money from Peter to Paul, there is no direct loss to any economy which includes them both - and in this case it does include both as it is the global economy they are claiming for.

Of course there can be secondary effects suc

Re:

[JesseMcDonald]

If you transfer money from Peter to Paul, there is no direct loss to any economy which includes them both...

If you're talking about a voluntary transfer in a competitive market, sure. But that's not the case here. A forced transfer of property is pretty much always a direct loss—not of money, of course, but of economic value. The owner loses more value than the thief gains.

Re:

[vel-ex-tech]

This is what bothers me about anarcho-libertarianism. The government is not a thief. Taxation by itself is not theft. Taxation buys us civilization: infrastructure, law enforcement, etc. The list of congressional powers enumerated in the Constitution of the USA is a good yardstick for what the founders believed the role of government was.

Articles of Confederation failed for a number of reasons, but it demonstrated that there is some minimum size for a functional government and hence a functional society