Cambodia has benefited from the US’ GSP scheme since 1997. In July last year, the US expanded GSP preferences to Cambodia by allowing Cambodian-made travel goods to enter the US market duty-free. However, Cambodia hopes footwear exports are included in the GSP scheme. This is an unlikely, since footwear has never been included in the scheme since it was established in 1976.

Meanwhile the US will review countries that have been granted GSP and see how they score on criteria like combating child labor, respecting internationally recognised worker rights, providing adequate and effective intellectual property protection, and providing the US with equitable and reasonable market access.

If a country fails to meet the criteria, the US could trigger a full review and strip a country of its status, thus ending duty-free access to the world’s largest consumer market. In the past, the US has excluded some countries from GSP coverage because they supported terrorism, for example, Libya, or were communist, like Vietnam, or were deemed to be facilitating intellectual property piracy.

Cambodia, for one, has always met criteria for the GSP scheme and secured its eligibility because of improvements in working conditions, especially in the garment industry that has seen higher wages.