Small Business Paid $250,000 in INTEREST on Bank Loans to Stay Afloat During GSP Expiration
Last week, we profiled two companies (Summit Specialty International in Georgia and Sophia Foods in New York) that have bounced bounced strongly since Congress renewed GSP. Despite difficulties faced during the GSP lapse, both have more workers – and provide expanded benefits for those workers – than when GSP expired in 2013. (If you ha...
Continue readingIt isn’t 1810
“It is an extremely arbitrary and outdated tariff. Our politicians need to realize we operate in a global economy now; it isn’t 1810.” That comment was provided by Alex Livingston, President of Summit Specialty International in Alpharetta, Georgia, in response to our new GSP renewal impacts survey. The small business imports inter...
Continue readingGSP Renewal Allows New York Small Business to Refill Positions Lost During Expiration – and Then Some
Last week, we received a response to our new GSP renewal impacts survey from Candace Abitbul from Sophia Foods in Brooklyn, New York. Candace and her husband Danny, who own the small business together, have repeatedly shared their GSP story over the years (see below for a timeline from an August 2014 post). As detailed...
Continue readingNew Jersey Small Business Explains Impacts of GSP Expiration, Renewal
EVCO International is a small business in Manalapan, New Jersey that imports marble kitchenware and bath accessories from Indonesia and India and kettles from Thailand. When GSP expired and EVCO tried to raises prices, sales fell. Higher costs impacted both EVCO’s US sales and its exports from New Jersey to South America, Europe, Canada. As.....
Continue readingGSP Renewal Survey (Preliminary Results): 55% of Respondents Incorporate GSP Imports into Exports
On Friday, we published the first preliminary finding from our new GSP renewal survey: that nearly 1 in 4 companies was still waiting for refunds after one year. Today, we want to highlight the responses to another question that had not been asked in the past, namely whether or not the products receiving duty-free benefits...
Continue readingGSP Renewal Survey (Preliminary Results): 23% of Companies STILL Waiting for Refunds
A few weeks back, we launched a survey on the impacts of GSP renewal after 1 year. (If you haven’t answered it already, please take a moment to do so now.) While many of the questions (or variations of them) have been asked in previous surveys, there were a few new ones as well. One...
Continue readingYear-to-Date GSP Savings By State through June 2016
In the first half of 2016, GSP saved American companies about $353 million in eliminated tariffs. So far, GSP eliminated at least $1 million in tariffs on imports into 36 states (plus Puerto Rico). The map below shows the overall GSP imports and savings by state from January to June. Companies in California continued to...
Continue readingGSP Saved American Companies $61 Million in June 2016
In June, the GSP program saved American companies $61 million on about $1.5 billion in imports. GSP saved U.S. companies $353 million in the first half of 2016, more than any year since 2012. Overall, the value of GSP imports increased by 9 percent and the value of GSP tariff savings increased by 14 percent...
Continue readingSurvey: GSP Renewal Impacts After 1 Year
Friday marked the one-year anniversary of the GSP program going back into effect. What has been the impact since then? On the data side, we know the renewal alone led to about $1.3 billion in refunds. We also know that GSP waived about $580 million in additional import taxes from August 2015 to May 2016...
Continue readingGSP Saved American Companies $62 Million in May 2016
In May, the GSP program saved American companies $62 million on about $1.6 billion in imports. The GSP program saved U.S. companies $292 million in the first five months of 2016. Overall, the value of GSP imports and tariff savings both increased by more than 10 percent compared to May 2015. Some states, such as...
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