International Trade: Rules of Origin

[Excerpt] Determining the country of origin of a product is important for properly assessing tariffs, enforcing trade remedies (such as anti-dumping and countervailing duties) or quantitative restrictions (tariff quotas), and statistical purposes. Other commercial trade policies are also linked with origin determinations, such as country of origin labeling and government procurement regulations. Rules of origin (ROO), used to determine the country of origin of merchandise entering the U.S. market, can be very simple, noncontroversial tools of international trade as long as all of the parts of a product are manufactured and assembled primarily in one country. However, when a finished product’s component parts originate in many countries, as is often the case in today’s global trading environment, determining origin can be a very complex, sometimes subjective, and time-consuming process. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is the agency responsible for determining country of origin using various ROO schemes. Non-preferential rules of origin are used to determine the origin of goods imported from countries with which the United States has most-favored-nation (MFN) status. They are the principal regulatory tools for accurate assessment of tariffs on imports, addressing country of origin labeling issues, qualifying goods for government procurement, and enforcing trade remedy actions and trade sanctions. Preferential rules are used to determine the eligibility of imported goods from certain U.S. free trade agreement (FTA) partners and certain developing country beneficiaries to receive duty-free or reduced tariff benefits under bilateral or regional FTAs, trade preference programs (such as the Generalized System of Preferences), and other special import programs. Preferential rules of origin are specific to each FTA, which means that they vary from agreement to agreement and preference to preference. This report deals with ROO in three parts. First, we describe in more detail the reasons that country of origin rules are important and briefly describe U.S. laws and methods that provide direction in making these determinations. Second, we discuss briefly some of the more controversial issues involving rules of origin, including the apparently subjective nature of some CBP origin determinations, and the effects of the global manufacturing process on ROO. Third, we conclude with some alternatives and options that Congress could consider that might assist in simplifying the process. This report will be updated as events warrant

International Trade: Rules of Origin

[Excerpt] Recent trade policy issues have pointed to the framework used by the United States and other countries to regulate imports, including the process of determining country of origin using “rules of origin” (ROO). Such rules can be very simple, noncontroversial tools of international trade as long as all of the parts of a product are manufactured and assembled primarily in one country. However, when a finished product’s component parts originate in many countries—as is often the case in today’s global trading environment—determining origin can be a very complex, sometimes subjective, and time-consuming process. This report first provides a general overview of the U.S. ROO system, including its implementation as it applies to manufactured imports. Second, advantages and disadvantages of the ROO schemes as implemented by the United States are also discussed. Third, the report illustrates ways in which the application of the rules of origin system can lead to country of origin determinations that could be inconsistent with U.S. policy objectives or goals, or encourage businesses to circumvent them. The report concludes with some options that Congress could consider in order to improve the ROO process

Temperature-based metallicity measurements at z=0.8: direct calibration of strong-line diagnostics at intermediate redshift

We present the first direct calibration of strong-line metallicity diagnostics at significant cosmological distances using a sample at z=0.8 drawn from the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey. Oxygen and neon abundances are derived from measurements of electron temperature and density. We directly compare various commonly used relations between gas-phase metallicity and strong line ratios of O, Ne, and H at z=0.8 and z=0. There is no evolution with redshift at high precision ($\Delta \log{\mathrm{O/H}} = -0.01\pm0.03$, $\Delta \log{\mathrm{Ne/O}} = 0.01 \pm 0.01$). O, Ne, and H line ratios follow the same locus at z=0.8 as at z=0 with $\lesssim$0.02 dex evolution and low scatter ($\lesssim$0.04 dex). This suggests little or no evolution in physical conditions of HII regions at fixed oxygen abundance, in contrast to models which invoke more extreme properties at high redshifts. We speculate that offsets observed in the [N II]/H$\alpha$ versus [O III]/H$\beta$ diagram at high redshift are therefore due to [NII] emission, likely as a result of relatively high N/O abundance. If this is indeed the case, then nitrogen-based metallicity diagnostics suffer from systematic errors at high redshift. Our findings indicate that locally calibrated abundance diagnostics based on alpha-capture elements can be reliably applied at z$\simeq$1 and possibly at much higher redshifts. This constitutes the first firm basis for the widespread use of empirical calibrations in high redshift metallicity studies.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures, accepted to Ap

Turning the Quantum Group Invariant XXZ Spin-Chain Hermitian: A Conjecture on the Invariant Product

This is a continuation of a previous joint work with Robert Weston on the quantum group invariant XXZ spin-chain (math-ph/0703085). The previous results on quasi-Hermiticity of this integrable model are briefly reviewed and then connected with a new construction of an inner product with respect to which the Hamiltonian and the representation of the Temperley-Lieb algebra become Hermitian. The approach is purely algebraic, one starts with the definition of a positive functional over the Temperley-Lieb algebra whose values can be computed graphically. Employing the Gel'fand-Naimark-Segal (GNS) construction for C*-algebras a self-adjoint representation of the Temperley-Lieb algebra is constructed when the deformation parameter q lies in a special section of the unit circle. The main conjecture of the paper is the unitary equivalence of this GNS representation with the representation obtained in the previous paper employing the ideas of PT-symmetry and quasi-Hermiticity. An explicit example is presented.Comment: 12 page

Measurement of the differential cross-section of B + meson production in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV at ATLAS

The production cross-section of B + mesons is measured as a function of transverse momentum p T and rapidity y in proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energy s√=7 TeV, using 2.4 fb−1 of data recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The differential production cross-sections, determined in the range 9 GeV < p T < 120 GeV and |y| < 2.25, are compared to next-to-leading-order theoretical predictions

Dynamics of isolated-photon plus jet production in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The dynamics of isolated-photon plus jet production in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV has been studied with the ATLAS detector at the LHC using an integrated luminosity of 37 pb−1. Measurements of isolated-photon plus jet bin-averaged cross sections are presented as functions of photon transverse energy, jet transverse momentum and jet rapidity. In addition, the bin-averaged cross sections as functions of the difference between the azimuthal angles of the photon and the jet, the photon–jet invariant mass and the scattering angle in the photon–jet centre-of-mass frame have been measured. Next-to-leading-order QCD calculations are compared to the measurements and provide a good description of the data, except for the case of the azimuthal opening angle

Measurement of jet shapes in top-quark pair events at √s =7 TeV using the ATLAS detector

A measurement of jet shapes in top-quark pair events using 1.8 fb−1 of √s=7 TeV pp collision data recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC is presented. Samples of top-quark pair events are selected in both the single-lepton and dilepton final states. The differential and integrated shapes of the jets initiated by bottom-quarks from the top-quark decays are compared with those of the jets originated by light-quarks from the hadronic W-boson decays W→qq¯′ in the single-lepton channel. The light-quark jets are found to have a narrower distribution of the momentum flow inside the jet area than b-quark jets

Measurement of the production cross section of jets in association with a Z boson in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Measurements of the production of jets of particles in association with a Z boson in pp collisions at s√=7 TeV are presented, using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.6 fb−1 collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Inclusive and differential jet cross sections in Z events, with Z decaying into electron or muon pairs, are measured for jets with transverse momentum p T > 30 GeV and rapidity |y| < 4.4. The results are compared to next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD calculations, and to predictions from different Monte Carlo generators based on leading-order and next-to-leading-order matrix elements supplemented by parton showers

The non-linear transient behavior of second, third and fourth order phase-locked loops

Non-linear transient behavior of second, third, and fourth order phase-locked loop

Quantum measurements of atoms using cavity QED

Generalized quantum measurements are an important extension of projective or von Neumann measurements, in that they can be used to describe any measurement that can be implemented on a quantum system. We describe how to realize two non-standard quantum measurements using cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED). The first measurement optimally and unabmiguously distinguishes between two non-orthogonal quantum states. The second example is a measurement that demonstrates superadditive quantum coding gain. The experimental tools used are single-atom unitary operations effected by Ramsey pulses and two-atom Tavis-Cummings interactions. We show how the superadditive quantum coding gain is affected by errors in the field-ionisation detection of atoms, and that even with rather high levels of experimental imperfections, a reasonable amount of superadditivity can still be seen. To date, these types of measurement have only been realized on photons. It would be of great interest to have realizations using other physical systems. This is for fundamental reasons, but also since quantum coding gain in general increases with code word length, and a realization using atoms could be more easily scaled than existing realizations using photons.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure