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On December 23, 2014, the President issued Presidential Proclamation 9223 of December 23, 2014 — To Take Certain Actions Under the African Growth and Opportunity Act and for Other Purposes (published in the Federal Register on December 30, 2014) The Proclamation:
• Designates Guinea-Bissau as a beneficiary sub-Saharan African country and revises general note 16(a) to the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTS) by inserting in alphabetical sequence in the list of beneficiary sub-Saharan African countries “Republic of Guinea-Bissau (Guinea-Bissau).”
• Terminates the designations of South Sudan and The Gambia as beneficiary sub-Saharan African countries for purposes of section 506A of the 1974 Act effective on January 1, 2015 and revises general note 16(a) to the HTS by deleting “Republic of South Sudan” and “Republic of The Gambia” from the list of beneficiary sub-Saharan African countries. Note 7(a) to subchapter II and note 1 to subchapter XIX of chapter 98 of the HTS are modified to delete “The Gambia” from the list of beneficiary countries. Further, note 2(d) to subchapter XIX of chapter 98 of the HTS is modified by deleting “The Gambia” from the list of lesser developed beneficiary sub-Saharan African countries.
• Modifies the HTS. In order to extend for an additional year U.S. tariff commitments under the 2004 agreement on agricultural trade with Israel through December 31, 2015.
• Modifies the HTS as set forth in Annex II to the proclamation to adopt the recommendations of USITC in Investigation No. 1205-10 (Recommendations to Modify Chapters 29, 30, 37, and 85 of the HTS contained in USITC Publication 4392 (corrected August 2013)) pursuant to the International Convention on the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (the HS Convention),
• Provides that the modifications to the HTS set forth in Annex II shall be effective with respect to goods that are entered regarding changes to the , or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption, on or after the later of January 1, 2015, or the 30th day after publication of the proclamation in the Federal Register.
• Makes technical corrections necessary to provide the intended duty treatment under Article 3.2.8 of the United States-Bahrain Free Trade Agreement (USBFTA) the HTS (staged reductions) as set forth in Annex III to the proclamation.
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