The Proposed U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS ...

CRS-34
the VWP is likely to no longer be an issue in bilateral relations. South Korea is one
of the United States’ largest sources of foreign visitors. In FY2007 there were
811,251 short term visitors for business or pleasure from South Korea. 106
General Provisions
The KORUS FTA text contains a number of provisions that cut across in many
sectors in bilateral trade. Many of these provisions have become standard fare and
have become part of the template for FTAs in which the United States participates.
Trade Remedies
Trade remedies, laws and actions designed to provide relief to domestic industries
that have been injured or threatened with injury by imports, are regarded by many in
Congress as an important trade policy tool to mitigate the adverse effects of lower
priced imports on U.S. industries and workers.
The three most commonly used trade remedies are antidumping (AD),
countervailing duty (CVD), and safeguard actions. Antidumping (19 U.S.C. § 1673
et seq.) actions provide relief from the adverse impact of imports sold at prices
shown to be less than fair market value, and countervailing duty (19 U.S.C. § 1671
et seq.) actions provide similar relief from goods that have been subsidized by a
foreign government or other public entity. Safeguard actions (19 U.S.C. § 2251 et
seq.) are designed to give domestic industries an opportunity to adjust to new
competition and are triggered by import surges of fairly traded goods. The relief
provided in a safeguard case is a temporary import duty, temporary import quota, or
a combination of both, while the relief in an antidumping or countervailing duty
action is an additional duty placed on the dumped or subsidized imports. These
actions are authorized by the WTO as long as they are consistent with the rights and
obligations of Article XIX of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)
1994, the WTO Agreement on Safeguards and Countervailing Measures (Subsidies
Agreement), and the WTO Agreement on Implementation of Article VI of the GATT
1994 (Antidumping Agreement). 107
Many Members of Congress have expressed support for maintaining and
strengthening U.S. trade remedy laws in the face of growing import competition. As
a result, the preservation of U.S. authority to “enforce rigorously its trade laws” was
105 (...continued)
9/11 Commission Recommendations Act of 2007. For more on the U.S. Visa Waiver
Program, see CRS Report RL32221, Visa Waiver Program, by Alison Siskin.
106 Department of Homeland Security, Temporary Admissions in Yearbook of Immigration
Statistics: 2007 Table 28.
107 For more information, see CRS Report RL32371, Trade Remedies: A Primer, by Vivian
C. Jones.