European Commission proposes updated IT export regulations

Yesterday, the upper house of the European parliament proposed an update to the now 12-year old Information Technology Agreement (ITA) that eliminates customs duties and tariffs on the export of tech hardware.

The proposal to update the agreement comes just over three months after Japan, the United States, and Taiwan (Republic of China) filed complaints with the World Trade Organization that the ITA is no longer current, claiming that duties continue to be levied on products whose definitions are not included in the document which should otherwise render them exempt from tariffs.

Many of the devices included in the document's original text are now mostly legacies, including "word processing machines," and "magnetic data tape over 6.5 mm in width," It does not include three crucial exports: flat-screen video displays, printer/scanner/fax combo machines, and connected set-top boxes. The important thing about these three products is that they all serve multiple functions, all of which are discretely covered by the document, but not together.

As a result, there's a curious loophole: A converged product, such as an STB that has a number of covered functions, may not be covered by the duty exemption clause of the ITA simply because those functions are covered together.

A primary focus of the updated ITA is to "deal with issues created by technological convergence" that the original draft excluded from coverage.

The document was originally drafted at the Singapore Ministerial Conference and endorsed by 29 countries. Since that time, a group of over 70 new countries have signed on-board, representing an estimated 97% of world trade in IT.