AGOA

The African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA)......Please give me an excedrin.

The past two days at work, I have been researching the trade agreement between the United States and Africa. When we get the wholesale line moving, we will be mainly importing products from Kenya and Thailand. It is crucial and necessary to review all trade agreements with the countries you will be importing from. Kenya, which is in Africa, is part of the AGOA.

The AGOA was signed into law on May 18, 2000 as Title 1 of The Trade and Development Act of 2000. The Act offers tangible incentives for African countries to continue their efforts to open their economies and build free markets. The AGOA issues duty-free treatment under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) for specific articles from sub-Saharan African countries that would typically be prohibited from GSP provisions.

Specific textile and apparel articles are eligible to be duty-free, quantity-free entry if they meet the AGOA's strict standards. In order to see if they are eligible, you have to categorize your product under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS). The HTS contains the tariff rates and statistical categories for all merchandise imported into the United States. It is based on the international Harmonized System, which is the global system of nomenclature that is used to describe most world trade goods.

This was taken directly from the AGOA website:

AGOA IV provides duty-free and quota-free treatment for eligible apparel articles made in qualifying sub-Saharan African countries through 2015. Qualifying articles include:

• Apparel made of U.S. yarns and fabrics;
• Apparel made of sub-Saharan African (regional) yarns and fabrics, subject to a cap until 2015;
• Apparel made in a designated lesser developed country of third-country yarns and fabrics, subject to a cap until 2012;
• Apparel made of yarns and fabrics not produced in commercial quantities in the United States;
• Certain cashmere and merino wool sweaters;
• Eligible handloomed, handmade, or folklore articles and ethnic printed fabrics; and
• Textiles and textile articles produced entirely in a lesser-developed beneficiary country.
  
  

We will be importing other products besides apparel for the wholesale line, but this gives you an idea of some of the rules. The picture below is an example of a product categorized on the HTS. Hopefully as I move forward this will become less complex, at least I'm crossing my fingers.