U.S. ASKS CONGRESS TO REVISE TARIFF CATEGORIES
  The Administration asked Congress to
  replace the U.S. tariff schedule with a new system to bring it
  into line with international tariff categories, U.S. Trade
  Representative Clayton Yeutter said.
      The new system will add such items as fiber optics and more
  accurately define new composites, items not widely traded when
  the current schedule was devised some 30 years ago.
      Yeutter said the Harmonized System, as the new schedule is
  called, will change tariff categories and definitions to meet
  the present-day needs of exporters and importers, but they
  should pay about the same rates of duties.
      Yeutter said, "American exporters will find it far easier to
  deal with one standardized worldwide system than the variety of
  differing systems which they now face."
      He said the new system ended 12 years of multinational
  negotiations to create the unified tariff schedule.
      Yeutter said government and business moves are based on
  data from tariff schedules and the new system will improve
  knowledge of trade flows and the quality of decision-making.
      He said 56 nations pledged to bring their standards under
  the new system, with about half expected to join the system by
  January 1988.
  

