As of today, GSP has been expired for a full 11 months. With a cost of more than $1.8 million per day, importers have paid an estimated $614 million in higher taxes because of Congress’ failure to renew GSP. It gets worse: after August 1, Congress has just 3 legislative weeks until mid November. That makes the next few weeks crucial to importers who cannot wait until late November (at the earliest) for GSP renewal.
Congress needs to recognize that each delay costs constituents real money, so we would like to start “GSP Tariff Tuesdays.” The goal is simple: get as many companies as possible to contact their Senators/Representatives every Tuesday about GSP expiration costs to date and the need to renew GSP immediately.
Tariff Tuesdays – how does they work? It’s pretty simple, particularly since this is week 1.
Step 1: Determine the value of tariffs paid by your company because GSP expired on August 1, 2013
Step 2: Go to our Senate and House contact pages to find the emails for the appropriate trade staffers
Step 3: Copy and paste the following into an email, [REPLACING BRACKETED TEXT] as necessary…
I’m writing on behalf of [COMPANY] in [CITY, ST] about the need to renew the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program. We import [PRODUCTS] from [COUNTRY/COUNTRIES] and have paid [$XX,XXX] in higher taxes because GSP expired.
Please work with Leadership and the [CHOOSE EITHER Senate Finance OR House Ways and Means] Committee to pass a retroactive GSP renewal bill before Congress adjourns for the August recess.
Sincerely,
[SIGNATURE]
Step 4: Let us know about any responses you get from staffers
That’s it – at least until next Tuesday. The more companies participate, the more effective it will be, so please take a few minutes to send your first Tariff Tuesday emails today.
