US removes 25 countries from developing nations list

14 Feb '20

2 min read

All BRICS countries are now out of the US developing nations list. Pic: Shutterstock

Preferential treatment in trade would no more be available to 25 countries as the US has removed them from its list of developing nations. US has ended the special preference for countries that are either members of G-20, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and are categorised as high-income nations by the World Bank.

The countries for which the US has abolished its special preferences are Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Georgia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Malaysia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand, Ukraine, and Vietnam.

According to the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) the narrow down on the list of developing countries was taken to reduce the threshold for an investigation into whether nations are harming US industries with unfairly subsidised exports.

As per the USTR, the step to narrow down on the list was part of the decision to revise the developing country methodology for countervailing duty investigations, whcih was needed as America's previous guidance is now “obsolete”.

Last month, addressing at the World Economic Forum 2020 in Davos, US President Donald Trump had made it clear that economies like China and India should not be considered developing nations by the World Trade Organization.

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