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Office Of The U.S. Trade Representative
The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is an agency of the United States federal government responsible for developing and promoting American trade policy. Part of the Executive Office of the President, it is headed by the U.S. Trade Representative, a Cabinet-level position that serves as the U.S. President's primary advisor, negotiator, and spokesperson on trade matters. USTR has more than two hundred employees, with offices in Geneva, Switzerland, and Brussels, Belgium. USTR was established as the Office of the Special Trade Representative (STR) by the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, leads trade negotiations at bilateral and multilateral levels, and coordinates trade policy with other government agencies through the Trade Policy Committee (TPC), Trade Policy Committee Review Group (TPCRG), and Trade Policy Staff Committee (TPSC). Its areas of expertise include foreign direct investment, commodity agreements, trade-related intellectual property protection, ...
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Winder Building
The Winder Building is an office building in Washington, D.C., just west of the White House. It is located at 604 17th Street, Northwest, Washington, D.C. History It was designed by Richard A. Gilpin, (or Robert Mills), for W. H. Winder, a nephew of Gen. William H. Winder. It was leased as government offices. The government purchased it in 1854 for $200,000. It was originally covered in stucco, which was stripped and brick painted. The windows have been replaced. The building is maintained by General Services Administration and occupied by the Office of the United States Trade Representative The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is an agency of the United States federal government responsible for developing and promoting American trade policy. Part of the Executive Office of the President, it is headed by the ..., since 1981. It was threatened with demolition in 1974. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places. File:Oldwinderbui ...
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United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and powers of the Senate are established by Article One of the United States Constitution. The Senate is composed of senators, each of whom represents a single state in its entirety. Each of the 50 states is equally represented by two senators who serve staggered terms of six years, for a total of 100 senators. The vice president of the United States serves as presiding officer and president of the Senate by virtue of that office, despite not being a senator, and has a vote only if the Senate is equally divided. In the vice president's absence, the president pro tempore, who is traditionally the senior member of the party holding a majority of seats, presides over the Senate. As the upper chamber of Congress, the Senate has several powers ...
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Omnibus Foreign Trade And Competitiveness Act
The Omnibus Foreign Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 is an act passed by the United States Congress and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. History During the 1970s, the U.S. trade surplus slowly diminished and turned into an increasing deficit. As the deficit increased through the 1980s, some of the blame fell on the tariffs placed on US products by foreign countries, and the lack of similar tariffs on imports into the United States. Workers, unions and industry management all called for government action against countries with an unfair advantage. The Omnibus Foreign Trade and Competitiveness Act started as an amendment proposed by Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO) to order the Executive branch to thoroughly examine trade with countries that have large trade surpluses with the United States. If the trade surpluses continued, the offending country would be faced with a bilateral surplus-reduction requirement of 10%. Because of its style of zero-sum game thought, it ...
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Generalized System Of Preferences
The Generalized System of Preferences, or GSP, is a preferential tariff system which provides tariff reduction on various products. The concept of GSP is very different from the concept of " most favored nation" (MFN). MFN status provides equal treatment in the case of tariff being imposed by a nation but in case of GSP differential tariff could be imposed by a nation on various countries depending upon factors such as whether it is a developed country or a developing country. Both the rules comes under the purview of WTO. GSP provides tariff reduction for least developed countries but MFN is only for not discriminating among WTO members. History The idea of tariff preferences for developing countries was the subject of considerable discussion within the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in the 1960s. Among other concerns, developing countries claimed that MFN was creating a disincentive for richer countries to reduce and eliminate tariffs and other tr ...
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Agreement On Trade-Related Aspects Of Intellectual Property Rights
The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is an international legal agreement between all the member nations of the World Trade Organization (WTO). It establishes minimum standards for the regulation by national governments of different forms of intellectual property (IP) as applied to nationals of other WTO member nations. TRIPS was negotiated at the end of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) between 1989 and 1990 and is administered by the WTO. The TRIPS agreement introduced intellectual property law into the multilateral trading system for the first time and remains the most comprehensive multilateral agreement on intellectual property to date. In 2001, developing countries, concerned that developed countries were insisting on an overly narrow reading of TRIPS, initiated a round of talks that resulted in the Doha Declaration. The Doha declaration is a WTO statement that clarifies the scope of TRIPS, s ...
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Doha Development Round
The Doha Development Round or Doha Development Agenda (DDA) is the trade-negotiation round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) which commenced in November 2001 under then director-general Mike Moore. Its objective was to lower trade barriers around the world, and thus facilitate increased global trade. The Doha Agenda began with a ministerial-level meeting in Doha, Qatar in 2001. The aim was to put less developed countries' priorities at heart. The needs of the developing countries were the core reasons for the meeting. The major factors discussed include trade facilitation, services, rules of origin and dispute settlement. Special and differential treatment for the developing countries were also discussed as a major concern. Subsequent ministerial meetings took place in Cancún, Mexico (2003), and Hong Kong (2005). Related negotiations took place in Paris, France (2005), Potsdam, Germany (2007), and Geneva, Switzerland (2004, 2006, 2008). Progress in negotiations stalled af ...
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Trump Presidency
Donald Trump's tenure as the 45th president of the United States began with his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican from New York City, took office following his Electoral College victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, in which he lost the popular vote to Clinton by nearly 3 million votes. Upon his inauguration, he became the first president in American history without prior public office or military background. Trump made an unprecedented number of false or misleading statements during his campaign and presidency. His presidency ended with defeat in the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden after one term in office. Trump was unsuccessful in his efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act but took measures to hinder its functioning and rescinded the individual mandate. Trump sought substantial spending cuts to major welfare programs, including Medicare and Medicai ...
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Robert Lighthizer
Robert Emmet Lighthizer (; born October 11, 1947) is an American attorney and government official who served as the United States Trade Representative from 2017 to 2021. After he graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 1973, Lighthizer joined the firm of Covington and Burling in Washington, D.C. He left the firm in 1978 to serve as chief minority counsel and later staff director and chief of staff of the Senate Committee on Finance under Chairman Bob Dole. In 1983, Robert Lighthizer was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as Deputy U.S. Trade Representative for President Ronald Reagan. In 1985, Lighthizer joined the Washington office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP as a partner and led the firm's international trade group. On January 3, 2017, President-elect Donald Trump announced that he intended to nominate Lighthizer as his U.S. Trade Representative. Lighthizer was confirmed by the Senate on May 11, 2017, by a vote of 82–14. Along ...
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World Trade Organization
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization that regulates and facilitates international trade. With effective cooperation in the United Nations System, governments use the organization to establish, revise, and enforce the rules that govern international trade. It officially commenced operations on 1 January 1995, pursuant to the 1994 Marrakesh Agreement, thus replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that had been established in 1948. The WTO is the world's largest international economic organization, with 164 member states representing over 98% of global trade and global GDP. The WTO facilitates trade in goods, services and intellectual property among participating countries by providing a framework for negotiating trade agreements, which usually aim to reduce or eliminate tariffs, quotas, and other restrictions; these agreements are signed by representatives of member governmentsUnderstanding the WTO' Handbook at WTO offi ...
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Robert Holleyman
Robert Walker Holleyman II (born February 4, 1955) served as the United States Deputy Trade Representative, with the rank of ambassador, in the Office of the United States Trade Representative in September, 2014 to January 2017. Previously he was the President & CEO of the Business Software Alliance (BSA), the trade consortium which represents the interests of major software houses globally. In July 2017, Holleyman joined C&M International LLC, a division of Crowell & Moring, as president and CEO. He was also made partner in the firm's International Trade Group. Biography Holleyman obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in political science at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, and his Juris Doctor at Louisiana State University Law Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was judicial clerk for U.S. District Judge Jack M. Gordon in New Orleans, Louisiana and was also an attorney with Houston, Texas-based law firm Margraves, Kennerly & Schueler. Holleyman was legislat ...
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Michael Punke
Michael W. Punke (born December 7, 1964) is an American author, attorney, academic, and policy analyst. He is a former Deputy United States Trade Representative and U.S. Ambassador to the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2017, he became vice president for public policy at Amazon Web Services. As an author, Punke is best known for writing '' The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge'' (2002), which was adapted into film as '' The Revenant'' (2015), directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, with a screenplay by Iñárritu and Mark L. Smith, and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy. Early life and education Punke was born and raised in Torrington, Wyoming, the son of Marilyn and Butch Punke, a high school biology teacher. He has a younger brother, Tim, and a sister, Amy. They engaged in various outdoor activities in the wilderness like fishing, hunting, hiking, shooting, and mountain biking. When he was a teenager, he also spent at least three summers working a ...
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