All products contained in the Annex to the agreement are included in the participants' schedules, but flexibility was allowed with respect to the length of the implementation period, whereby some participants were given a longer time period to eliminate duties, i.e., after the year 2000. For the United States, tariff reductions entered into force on July 1, 1997. All signatories agreed to begin implementing reductions by January 1, 1998. As a result of consultations held at the WTO Ministerial in March 1997, it was agreed that ITA participants would hold expedited consultations to review and expand product coverage and to address other non-tariff barriers to trade. In spite of strong US industry support for ITA II, several countries have been unable to agree upon an expanded ITA product list.
Considerable disagreement exists over the inclusion of consumer electronics products, in particular.
It contains the new concessions resulting from the ITA negotiations and, for purposes of transparency, restates concessions made in previous negotiations for other products covered by the six-digit headings. When the zero duty has been implemented for all product provided for under the 8-digit line, the suffixes will no longer be used.