Us-Jordan Free Trade Agreement Text

Text of the Free Trade Agreement with Jordan: Full text of the agreement. Under the U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement, Jordan is required to adopt stricter provisions for the protection and enforcement of copyrights, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets. The free trade agreement will also open jordan`s services market to U.S. companies. These changes will provide U.S. and Jordanian companies, among others, with a more accessible and easy-to-navigate market base. Some may find the process of qualifying their own goods quite complicated. U.S. exporters can find information here to guide them through the process. However, users of this website should keep in mind that the text of the US-Jordanian Free Trade Agreement and Jordan`s customs regulations are the only final resources in terms of qualification. The Jordanian Free Trade Agreement (FTA) was signed on 24 October 2000. It will enter into force as the third U.S. free trade agreement and the first with an Arab state.

The free trade agreement is the cornerstone of the growing cooperation between the United States and Jordan in economic relations, which began with close bilateral cooperation upon Jordan`s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and was followed by the conclusion of a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement and a bilateral investment agreement. The free trade agreement serves as an example to Jordan`s neighbours of the benefits of peace and economic reform. The Ministry of Labour is working with the International Labour Organization`s (ILO) Better Work programme, funded by DOL, to improve the understanding of internationally recognised labour standards and the process of carrying out audits in the garment sector, including by assigning labour inspectors to the project. The ongoing commitment focuses on internalizing lessons learned from Better Work to build the capacity of labour inspectors, conducting inspections, including dormitories in QIZs, and continuing public relations to ensure stakeholders understand their legal rights to participate in unions and workplaces without discrimination or harassment. Jordan has also worked with Better Work Jordan to ensure that factory-level audits are publicly available, and products from eligible industrial zones (QQIs) established in 1996 under President Bill Clinton that were manufactured in Israel, Jordan, Egypt or the West Bank and Gaza Strip allowed duty-free importation into the United States. Exports need at least 35% of their value added from Israel, Jordan (i.e. in the QIZ) and the West Bank or Gaza to be considered as beneficiaries of the QIZ. Jordanian exports also needed at least 8% of their value added to come from Israel. [1] Jordan became a “magnet for apparel manufacturing” when U.S. companies such as Wal-Mart, Target, and Hanes established factories to cut costs by eliminating tariffs. In its first year of existence, Jordan had increased its exports by 213 per cent and created 30,000 jobs.

Until 2002, Jordan had a marginal trade surplus with the United States. [1] Five years after the entry into force of the free trade agreement, Jordanian exports to America had increased twentyfold; Jordan`s apparel exports to the United States amounted to $1.2 billion in 2005. [6] Most Jordanian exports to the United States come from one in 114 companies. [7] The United States continued to cooperate with Jordan on labour standards. In 2016, the Ministry of Labour (DOL) removed Jordanian clothing from its list of goods produced by child labour or forced labour on the grounds that the frequency of forced labour in the Jordanian garment sector had decreased significantly. The United States and Jordan have sought to build on this success through ongoing efforts under the 2013 Implementation Plan for Working and Living Conditions of Workers in Jordan. The plan addresses labour law concerns in Jordanian garment factories, including those related to anti-union discrimination against foreign workers, housing conditions for foreign workers, and gender-based discrimination and harassment. In 2016, Jordan`s Ministries of Health and Labour signed an agreement that requires ensuring that labour inspections also include dormitories for clothing, which is one of the outstanding commitments in the implementation plan. Inspections began in 2017. The United States and Jordan continued to work to finalize the implementation plan. Products must be composed of at least 35% Jordanian content in order to benefit from commercial advantages. [1] At the last meeting of the Joint Committee in May 2016, the United States and Jordan discussed labour, agriculture, in particular current technical barriers to agricultural trade, the adoption of the Trade Facilitation Agreement under the World Trade Organization (WTO), and accession to the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement.

The parties opened a dialogue to identify concrete measures to promote trade and investment bilaterally and between Jordan and other countries in the Middle East. At the end of the meetings, the issue of import licensing of poultry from the United States was resolved to allow the importation of U.S. poultry into Jordan. Poultry imports of US$8 million were exported to Jordan in 2017. The agreement also contains trade-related provisions on the environment and labour. These provisions do not oblige either country to adopt new labour or environmental laws, and each country reserves the right to establish its own labour and environmental standards and to amend these standards. Under the agreement, the two countries reaffirm the importance of not renouncing or derogating from their labour or environmental laws in order to promote trade and commit to effectively enforce their national labour and environmental laws. The free trade agreement is the first trade agreement to include substantial provisions for e-commerce, an initiative that is expected to help advance a global free trade agenda in a crucial sector for U.S. high-tech and multimedia companies. The two countries agreed to avoid tariffs on electronic transmissions, create unnecessary barriers to market access for digitized products, and impede the ability to provide services electronically. These provisions are also linked to commitments in the services sector, which together aim to promote investment in new technologies and promote the innovative use of networks for the provision of products and services. The agreement will significantly liberalize bilateral trade in services in a wide range of services sectors.

The United States and Jordan continue to enjoy a comprehensive economic partnership. A key element of this relationship is the U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which entered into force on December 17, 2001 and was fully implemented on January 1, 2010. In addition, the Eligible Industrial Zones (IQZ) program, established by the U.S. Congress in 1996, allows duty-free imports of products into the United States if they are manufactured in Jordan, Egypt or the West Bank and Gaza Strip with a certain amount of Israeli content. To take advantage of the benefits to U.S. goods under this agreement, exporters must understand how to determine whether their goods are originating or eligible for preferential tariff treatment under U.S.-Jordanian free trade rules. The Jordanian Free Trade Agreement (JOFTA) entered into force on 17 December 2001. Under the agreement, virtually all Jordanian goods enter the United States duty-free. The Jordanian Free Trade Agreement does NOT provide for an exemption from cargo handling fees (MPFs). In 2006, the National Labor Committee, a U.S. nongovernmental organization, published a series of reports on Jordanian sweatshops, whose conditions, according to the NLC`s executive director, were “the worst”: 20-hour workdays, unpaid for months, and physical violence. Most of the workers are not Jordanian; These are contract guest workers from countries such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and China who pay a lump sum of about $2,000 to $3,000 to be hired by a garment factory.

However, some factories then confiscate their passports and expose them de facto to involuntary servitude bordering on human trafficking. [8] Many members of Congress expressed concern, mainly because the Jordanian Free Trade Agreement was hailed as “historic and progressive” because it “incorporated labour and environmental provisions directly into the agreement rather than being in a side agreement.” [1] The Jordanian Free Trade Agreement allows for significant and comprehensive liberalisation in a wide range of trade issues. It will eliminate all tariff and non-tariff barriers to bilateral trade for virtually all industrial and agricultural products within ten years […].