The Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service has updated the quantity-based trigger levels for products that may be subject to additional import duties under the safeguard provisions of the World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture. This notice also includes the relevant period applicable for trigger levels on each of the affected products, which include beef, mutton, cheese, dairy products, peanuts and peanut butter, sugar and sugar products, cocoa powder, chocolate crumb, infant formula, mixes and doughs, condiments and seasonings, ice cream, animal feed, and cotton.
Under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, additional import duties may be imposed on imports of products subject to tariffs as a result of the Uruguay Round if the price of an individual shipment of imported products falls below the average price for similar goods imported during the years 1986-1988 by a specified percentage. It also permits additional duties to be imposed if the volume of imports of an article exceeds the sum of (a) a base trigger level multiplied by the average of the last three years of available import data and (b) the change in yearly consumption in the most recent year for which data are available. These additional duties may not be imposed on quantities for which minimum or current access commitments were made during the Uruguay Round negotiations, and only one type of safeguard (price or quantity) may be applied at any given time to an article.
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