Lunch Seminar: What Next for Trade in Information Technology Goods?

 Will complex information technology goods continue to be treated duty-free?
A new, contentious but very interesting trade dispute has drawn renewed attention to the decade-old Information Technology Agreement (ITA) in the WTO – an agreement which eliminated duties on IT goods. In June 2008, the United States, Japan and Taiwan filed a case against the European Union (EU), for allegedly breaching its ITA obligations. The EU has levied tariffs on products that others argue should have duty-free entry under the terms of the ITA. The EU says that these products have added on too many new features and no longer belong to the ITA. How to interpret the controversial EU’s actions? Which problems can the WTO case help solve, and which not? Why have previous attempts to adapt the ITA to new products with more sophisticated technologies failed? Can and should the ITA be upgraded? If so, how?

Fredrik Erixon, Director of ECIPE and Brian Hindley, Senior Fellow of ECIPE, will present and exchange views on new ECIPE research findings on EU trade policies in information technology products and the future of the ITA.

RSVP by January 13 at info@ecipe.org
Limited space available.

A light lunch will be served.