The U.S. Generalized System of Preferences for Developing Countries: International Innovation and the Art of the Possible

Abstract

On January 1, 1976, some 2,700 articles from 137 developing countries and territories became eligible to enter the United States free of import duties. By this overnight elimination of tariffs that had ranged as high as 28 percent, on articles as diverse as sausage and spacecraft, from countries as different as Brazil and Bangladesh, the United States became the twenty-third and most recent industrialized country to implement a “Generalized System of Preferences” (GSP), permitting imports from developing countries to enter at lower rates of duty than those applicable to the same products from industrialized countries.