An independent federal agency charged with providing data and information relative to international trade to both the legislative and executive branches of government.
The International Trade Commission (ITC) houses an extensive library of international trade resources and reference materials (the National Library of International Trade) and makes it available to the general public. A nonpartisan, quasi-judiciary body, the ITC consists of six commissioners appointed by the president of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The commissioners serve overlapping nine-year terms. The ITC is vested with broad investigative authority and advises the president, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), and members of Congress as they determine the impact of imports on American domestic industries and formulate policies regarding foreign trade practices that may be considered unfair.
Public debate on national tariff rates, by its very nature, impinges on important domestic economic interests and has incited intense partisan passions throughout the nation’s history. In 1916, Congress established the ITC’s institutional predecessor, the U.S. Tariff Commission, in part to introduce impartial expertise and factual foundation to the innately politicized process of debating national tariff legislations. The creation of the U.S. Tariff Commission also represented an emerging faith characteristic of the Progressive Era in “scientific” management of complex public policy issues by trained experts. A controversy first arose within the federal government over the establishment of an independent tariff board in the early years of the administration of William Howard Taft. The Republican president proposed the appointment of a panel of experts to advise him on the modification of the nation’s tariff schedules. His low-tariff Democratic opponents in Congress, most notably Oscar Underwood of Alabama, initially viewed Taft’s proposal as a backhanded attempt to delay proposed tariff reductions. Three years after the enactment of the Underwood Tariff of 1913, which represented the first substantial tariff reductions since the mid-nineteenth century, Congress established the U.S. Tariff Commission to gather and analyze information on trade matters in a factual, nonpartisan fashion. To ensure impartial deliberation, Congress built multiple safeguards into the commission’s structure. For instance, no more than three of the six commissioners could be of the same political party, and the commission’s chairman and vice chairman, designated by the president from among the current commissioners for two-year terms, had to come from different parties. The chairman could not be from the same political party as his or her immediate predecessor.
The U.S. Tariff Commission enhanced its prominence in the nation’s trade policy-making process after World War II, when Congress transferred jurisdiction over the Reciprocal Trade Agreement program’s escape clause and peril-point investigations from an executive interagency panel to the commission. In the Trade Act of 1974, Congress renamed the U.S. Tariff Commission the U.S. International Trade Commission. This name change reflected the broader range of issues beyond import duties that came to be considered relevant to foreign trade, such as intellectual property rights. In its original enabling legislation, the ITC was empowered only to advise the president and Congress by providing data and information on which U.S. trade policy was to be based. As such, it is a fact-finding agency and not a policy-making body in its own right. Nor does it negotiate trade agreements on behalf of the U.S. government, as is the case with the USTR. Recent legislation, such as the Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, however, has expanded the purview of the ITC’s advisory authority to include quasi-enforcement functions. It is now authorized not only to investigate the effects of imports on competing domestic industry, but also to direct imports to be excluded should it find that foreign producers are engaging in unfair trade practices or violating patent or copyright laws.
Steelworkers in Merrillville, Indiana, in 2001 attempt to sway members of the International Trade Commission, a federal agency that advises the president on trade issues, to impose tariffs on imported steel and thus save U.S. jobs. (© Scott Olson/WirePix/The Image Works)
The ITC’s current formal mission is threefold. First, the ITC administers U.S. trade remedy laws within its mandate in a fair and objective manner. Second, it provides the president of the United States, the USTR, and Congress with independent analysis, information, and support on matters of tariffs and international trade and competitiveness. Finally, it maintains the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States. To fulfill these institutional mandates, the ITC engages in the following categories of specific activities in concert with other federal agencies involved in trade policy:
1. It conducts investigations to determine whether domestic industries suffer material injury by reason of imports priced at less than fair value or from foreign government subsidization. In such countervailing duty and antidumping investigations, the ITC shares responsibility with the U.S. Department of Commerce. It is the department’s task first to determine whether the alleged subsidies or dumping are actually taking place. Then, the ITC’s responsibility is to determine whether the affected U.S. industry is materially injured by reason of the dumped or subsidized imports. If the department’s subsidy or dumping determination and the ITC’s injury determination are both in the affirmative, the Commerce Department, as a federal executive agency, issues an order to the U.S. Customs Service to impose additional duties.
2. The ITC may direct actions, subject to presidential approval, against unfair practices in import trade, such as patent, trademark, or copyright infringement. If the ITC determines that a violation of the law exists, it may order the exclusion of the imported product from the United States.
3. The ITC makes nonbinding recommendations to the president regarding relief for industries seriously injured by imports for the purpose of facilitating adjustment to foreign competition. Relief may take the form of tariff increases, import quotas, or temporary adjustment assistance for the affected domestic industry.
4. The ITC advises the president whether agricultural imports are interfering with domestic price-support programs administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
5. The ITC undertakes studies and conducts public hearings on trade and tariff issues and monitors import levels. It furnishes the results of such investigations to the president, the Senate Committee on Finance, or the House Committee on Ways and Means.
6. The ITC participates in the development of uniform statistical data on imports, exports, and domestic production and in the establishment and modification of the International Harmonized Commodity Code, which is a list of all the items that are imported into and exported from the United States.
Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu
See also: Tariff Barriers.
Dobson, John M. Two Centuries of Tariffs: The Background and Emergence of the U.S. International Trade Commission. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976.