Free Trade Agreements

RILA supports expanding access for U.S. consumers and manufacturers to goods and markets abroad through open trade relationships. FTAs seek to reduce trade barriers and enhance trading partnerships between nations. FTAs can provide significant benefits to retailers through trade and investment liberalization, transparency in regulatory trade practices, reductions in tariffs and non-tariff barriers and the creation of reliable and predictable sourcing opportunities.

Trans-Pacific Partnership

RILA supports a comprehensive, high-standard TPP agreement with a membership and coverage that provides significant market access opportunities in all sectors—particularly for products with high-duties in the United States, such as apparel and footwear. RILA believes that the U.S. should negotiate flexible rules governing trade in apparel and footwear that

incentivize commercial trade flows and investment. Moreover, duties on qualifying goods should be eliminated on a reciprocal basis on the first day a TPP agreement enters into force. The TPP talks currently include Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam. Additional countries have expressed interest in joining the talks. 

Information Technology Agreement (ITA)

Since its inception in 1996, the ITA has helped drive innovation, accelerate productivity, increase employment, create more efficient markets, lower consumer prices and bridge communities across the globe.  RILA supports an ambitious effort to expand the product coverage of the ITA in 2013 to include additional information and communication technology (ICT) products, particularly audio/visual products such as televisions. It is expected that an expanded ITA would increase global demand for ICT products and create thousands of jobs in the United States and abroad.