2025 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers (NTE); Wherever possible, this report presents estimates of the impact on U.S. exports, U.S. foreign direct investment, or U.S. electronic commerce of specific foreign trade barriers and other trade distorting practices.
FinTech BizNews Service
Mumbai, April 6, 2025: The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is responsible for the preparation of this report.
SCOPE AND COVERAGE
Foreign Trade Barriers
The 2025 National Trade Estimate (NTE) Report on Foreign Trade Barriers is the 40th report in an annual series that highlights significant foreign barriers to U.S. exports, U.S. foreign direct investment, and U.S. electronic commerce. This document is a companion piece to the President’s 2025 Trade Policy Agenda and 2024 Annual Report, published by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) on February 28, 2025.
In accordance with Section 181 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended by Section 303 of the Trade and Tariff Act of 1984 and amended by Section 1304 of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, Section 311 of the Uruguay Round Trade Agreements Act, and Section 1202 of the Internet Tax Freedom Act, USTR is required to submit to the President, the Senate Finance Committee, and appropriate committees in the House of Representatives, an annual report on significant foreign trade barriers. The statute requires an inventory from the previous calendar year of the most important foreign barriers affecting U.S. exports of goods and services, including agricultural commodities and U.S. intellectual property; foreign direct investment by U.S. persons, especially if such investment has implications for trade in goods or services; and U.S. electronic commerce. Such an inventory enhances awareness of these trade restrictions, facilitates U.S. negotiations aimed at reducing or eliminating these barriers, and is a valuable tool in enforcing U.S. trade laws and promoting U.S. economic and security interests.
The NTE Report is based upon information compiled within USTR, the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Agriculture, and other U.S. Government agencies, as well as U.S. embassies and supplemented with information provided in response to a notice published in the Federal Register, and by the trade advisory committees.
60 Trading Partners
This Report discusses the largest export markets for the United States, covering nearly 60 trading partners. Omission of particular trading partners and barriers does not imply that they are not of concern to the United States. Trade barriers elude fixed definitions, but may be broadly defined as government laws, regulations, policies, or practices—including non-market policies and practices—that distort or undermine fair competition. These include measures that protect domestic goods and services from foreign competition, artificially stimulate exports of particular domestic goods and services, or fail to provide adequate and effective protection of intellectual property rights. Non-market policies and practices, such as targeting of industrial sectors for dominance, non-market excess capacity, and distorting activities of state-owned or state-sponsored firms, may create economic and national security risks and undermine U.S. competitiveness. The purpose of the NTE Report is to identify barriers the U.S. Government seeks to remove.
Barriers In 14 Categories
The NTE Report classifies foreign trade barriers in 14 categories. These categories cover measures and policies that restrict, prevent, or impede the international exchange of goods and services, U.S. foreign direct investment, or U.S. electronic commerce. The categories covered include:
• Import policies (e.g., tariffs and other import charges, quantitative restrictions, import licensing, customs barriers and shortcomings in trade facilitation, and other market access barriers);
• Technical barriers to trade (e.g., unnecessarily trade restrictive standards, conformity assessment procedures, or technical regulations, including unnecessary or discriminatory technical regulations or standards for telecommunications products);
• Sanitary and phytosanitary measures (e.g., measures that unnecessarily restrict trade without furthering safety objectives because they are applied beyond the extent necessary to protect human, animal, or plant life or health, not based on science, or maintained without sufficient scientific evidence);
• Government procurement (e.g., “buy national” policies and closed bidding);
• Intellectual property protection (e.g., inadequate patent, copyright, trade secret, and trademark regimes and inadequate enforcement of intellectual property rights);
• Services barriers (e.g., prohibitions or restrictions on foreign participation in the market, discriminatory licensing requirements or regulatory standards, local-presence requirements, and unreasonable restrictions on what services may be offered);
• Electronic commerce / digital trade barriers (e.g., barriers to cross-border data flows, discriminatory practices affecting trade in digital products, restrictions on the provision of Internet-enabled services, and other restrictive technology requirements);
• Investment barriers (e.g., limitations on foreign equity participation and on access to foreign government-funded research and development programs, local content requirements, technology transfer requirements and export performance requirements, and restrictions on repatriation of earnings, capital, fees and royalties);
• Subsidies, including export subsidies (e.g., export financing on preferential terms and agricultural export subsidies that displace U.S. exports in third country markets) and import substitution subsidies (e.g., subsidies contingent on the purchase or use of domestic rather than imported goods);
• Anticompetitive practices (e.g., government-tolerated anticompetitive conduct of state-owned or private firms that restricts the sale or purchase of U.S. goods or services in the foreign country’s markets or abuse of competition laws to inhibit trade, and fairness and due process concerns by companies involved in competition investigatory and enforcement proceedings in the country);
• State-owned enterprises (e.g., actions by SOEs and by governments with respect to SOEs involved in the manufacture or production of non-agricultural goods or in the supply of services that constitute significant barriers to, or distortions of, U.S. exports of goods and services, U.S. investments, or U.S. electronic commerce, which may negatively affect U.S. firms and workers. These actions include subsidies and non-commercial advantages provided to and from SOEs and practices with respect to SOEs that discriminate against U.S. goods or services, or actions by SOEs that are inconsistent with commercial considerations in the purchase and sale of goods and services);
• Labor (e.g., concerns with failures by a government to protect internationally recognized worker rights 1 or to eliminate discrimination in respect of employment or occupation, in cases where these failures influence trade flows or investment decisions in ways that constitute significant barriers to, or distortions of, U.S. exports of goods and services, U.S. investment, or U.S. electronic commerce, which may negatively affect U.S. firms and workers);
• Environment (e.g., concerns with a government’s levels of environmental protection, unsustainable stewardship of natural resources, and harmful environmental practices that constitute significant barriers to, or distortions of, U.S. exports of goods and services, U.S. investment, or U.S. electronic commerce, which may negatively affect U.S. firms or workers); and
• Other barriers (e.g., barriers or distortions that are not covered in any other category above or that encompass more than one category, such as bribery and corruption, or that affect a single sector).
Pursuant to Section 1377 of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, USTR annually reviews the operation and effectiveness of U.S. telecommunications trade agreements to make a determination on whether any foreign government that is a party to one of those agreements is failing to comply with that government’s obligations or is otherwise denying, within the context of a relevant agreement, “mutually advantageous market opportunities” to U.S. telecommunication products or services suppliers. The NTE Report highlights both ongoing and emerging barriers to U.S. telecommunication services and goods exports from the annual review called for in Section 1377.
The prevalence of corruption is a consistent complaint from U.S. firms that trade with or invest in other economies. Corruption takes many forms and affects trade and development in different ways. In many countries and economies, it affects customs practices, licensing decisions, and the award of government procurement contracts. If left unchecked, bribery and corruption can negate market access gained through trade negotiations, frustrate broader reforms and economic stabilization programs, and undermine the foundations of the international trading system. The United States continues to play a leading role in addressing bribery and corruption in international business transactions and has made real progress over the past quarter century building international coalitions to fight bribery and corruption.
IMPACT OF FOREIGN BARRIERS ON U.S. TRADE
Wherever possible, this report presents estimates of the impact on U.S. exports, U.S. foreign direct investment, or U.S. electronic commerce of specific foreign trade barriers and other trade distorting practices. Where consultations related to specific foreign practices were proceeding at the time of this report’s publication, estimates were excluded in order to avoid prejudice to these consultations.
The estimates included in this report constitute an attempt to quantitatively assess the potential effect of removing certain foreign trade barriers to particular U.S. exports. However, the estimates cannot be used to determine the total effect on U.S. exports, either to the country in which a barrier has been identified, or to the world in general. In other words, the estimates contained in this report cannot be aggregated in order to derive a total estimate of gain in U.S. exports to a given country or the world. To provide further statistical context for the reader, Appendix II reports the most recent U.S. Government statistical data on U.S. bilateral trade in goods, U.S. bilateral trade in services, and U.S. bilateral foreign direct investment in rank order. 1 Internationally recognized worker rights include the right of association, the right to organize and bargain collectively, a prohibition on the use of any form of forced or compulsory labor, a minimum age for the employment of children, and a prohibition on the worst forms of child labor, and acceptable conditions of work with respect to minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health.
Trade barriers or other trade distorting practices affect U.S. exports to foreign markets, as they effectively impose costs on U.S. exports that are not imposed on goods produced in the importing market. These unfair trade practices undermine U.S. exporters’ competitiveness and, in some cases, prevent U.S. goods from entering the foreign market entirely. In theory, estimating the impact of a foreign trade measure on U.S. exports of goods requires knowledge of the (extra) cost the measure imposes on them, as well as knowledge of market conditions in the United States, in the country imposing the measure, and in third countries. In practice, such information often is not available.
Where sufficient data exist, an approximate impact of tariffs on U.S. exports can be derived by obtaining estimates of supply and demand price elasticities in the importing country and in the United States. Typically, the U.S. share of imports is assumed constant. When no calculated price elasticities are available, reasonable postulated values are used. The resulting estimate of lost U.S. exports is approximate, depends on the assumed elasticities, and does not necessarily reflect changes in trade patterns with third countries. Similar procedures are followed to estimate the impact of subsidies that displace U.S. exports in third country markets.
In some cases, stakeholder valuations estimating the financial effects of barriers are contained in the report. The methods for computing these valuations are sometimes uncertain. Hence, their inclusion in the NTE Report should not be construed as a U.S. Government endorsement of the estimates they reflect.
