... but then I see this:
More than 50 members of the World Trade Organisation on Wednesday concluded the biggest tariff-reduction deal in almost two decades, eliminating restrictions on the $1.3tn trade of 201 IT products.
Wednesday’s expansion of the 1996 Information Technology Agreement will increase global gross domestic product by $190bn a year, according to IT experts, as the costs are cut in trading goods from GPS devices and video game consoles to next-generation semiconductors.
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Barriers will be eliminated in three stages under the expanded ITA. 65 per cent of the new tariff lines representing 88 per cent of imports will be cut immediately on implementation of the deal in July 2016.
Three years later, additional cuts will mean 89 per cent of tariff lines representing 95 per cent of imports will have been cut. The remaining tariffs will be eliminated by January 2024.
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The 53 countries participating account for 90 per cent of the trade in IT products. All WTO countries will be able to benefit from the deal, however, because the cuts will be included in the ITA participants’ WTO so-called schedules of concessions.
People probably have varying expectations and hopes for what the WTO can and should accomplish, but to me, MFN-based tariff liberalization of this kind is a pretty big success.