U.S. International Trade Commission Releases The Year in Trade 2018

The U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) has released The Year in Trade 2018, its annual overview of developments regarding the administration of U.S. trade laws and trade agreements.

The USITC's The Year in Trade is one of the government's most comprehensive reports available regarding activities related to U.S. trade policies, agreements, and trade laws. This report is the 70th in a series of annual reports submitted to the U.S. Congress under section 163(c) of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2213(c)) and its predecessor legislation.

The publication reviews U.S. international trade laws and actions under these laws, activities of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and developments regarding U.S. free trade agreements (FTAs), FTA negotiations, and U.S. bilateral trade relations with major trading partners in 2018.

The Year in Trade 2018 covers:

• all U.S. antidumping, countervailing duty, safeguard, intellectual property rights infringement, national security and section 301 cases active in 2018.  In addition, the 2018 report covers the operation of U.S. trade preference programs, including the U.S. Generalized System of Preferences, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, the Nepal Trade Preferences Act, and the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act, including initiatives for Haiti;


• WTO dispute settlement decisions and other significant activities in the WTO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum;


• negotiations on U.S. FTAs with the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, and on the United States-Canada-Mexico Agreement, negotiations on modifications to the U.S.-Korea FTA, and developments regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement and other U.S. FTAs already in effect; and


• bilateral trade issues with selected major U.S. trading partners -- the European Union, China, Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, India, and Taiwan.

The report also provides an overview of U.S. trade in goods and services during 2018. Statistical tables highlight U.S. bilateral trade with major trading partners and trade under U.S. trade preference programs and free trade agreements.

An interactive, web-based version of The Year in Trade 2018 will be released later this month on October 17, 2019.

The Year in Trade 2018 (USITC Publication 4986, October 2019) will be posted on the USITC's Internet site at https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/pub4986.pdf.   Other reports in this series dating back to 1948 can also be found on the Commission's website at https://www.usitc.gov/annual_reports_archive.