Cost Savings or Other Benefits to U.S. Consumers Resulting from Temporary Duty Suspensions in the Trade and Tariff Act of 1984

摘要

On July 1, 1987, at the request of the Committee on Ways and Means of the U.S. House of Representatives, and in accordance with section 332(g) of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1332(g)), the United States International Trade Commission instituted investigation No. 332-247, Cost Savings or Other Benefits to U.S. Consumers Resulting From Temporary Duty Suspensions in the Trade and Tariff Act of 1984. The Commission was asked to determine whether, and to what extent, miscellaneous temporary duty suspensions enacted in Public Law 98-573 (title I, subtitle C) have resulted in decreased costs to U.S. consumers or other economic benefits than would not have occurred had no duty suspensions been enacted. More specifically, the Commission was asked to provide the following information on the articles covered by the duty suspensions: (1) the nature and use of the articles and whether each article is imported as an intermediate or end-use product; (2) description of the types of firms importing and using the subject articles as well as the sources of imports and the relationship of foreign suppliers to U.S. importers; (3) the trends in imports and domestic sales of the subject articles during 1984-86 and the influencing factors; and (4) the approximate tariff revenue lost during 1985-86 as a result of the temporary duty suspensions, any resulting cost savings passed on to consumers, the level of cost savings passed on to consumers of downstream, end-use products, and any other economic benefits that the intermediate or final consumer may obtain from tariff changes.