India, Thailand to pay import duties on gold jewelry

Washington, D.C.—President Bush has issued a proclamation terminating a trade policy that allowed India and Thailand to import gold jewelry without paying import duties.

Under the new policy, India and Thailand will pay a 5.5 percent import duty on gold jewelry.

The Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program, established in 1974, provides duty-free status to nearly 5,000 products exported to the United States from 131 beneficiary countries.

Under the duty-free program, India shipped approximately $2.2 billion and Thailand shipped approximately $700 million in fine, finished jewelry to the United States, constituting 33.2 percent and 10.5 percent, respectively, of U.S. jewelry imports, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

The new GSP program includes two "competitive need limitations" on the eligibility of a product for duty-free status: the annual trade of a product from a country exceeds a monetary threshold ($125 million in 2006), or the annual trade of a product from a country exceeds 50 percent of U.S. imports of that product.
Source: nationaljewelernetwork