President Trump has announced a series of tariff initiatives, including proposed 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, 10% tariffs imposed on goods from China (White House fact sheet), and proposed “reciprocal” tariffs on goods from nations that impose higher tariff rates.
When foreign goods are imported for sale to the U.S. government, if proper procedures are followed, the goods generally should be free from tariffs, per longstanding U.S. regulations. For information on U.S. agencies’ exemptions from tariffs in their procurements, see the analysis compiled here.
On February 21, 2025, GW Law’s Government Procurement Law Program held a webinar on rising U.S. and EU protectionism, which discussed recent caselaw in the EU Court of Justice and the Trump administration’s tariff initiatives.
Tuesday, February 18, 2020, 9 to 11 am – GWU Law School, Law Learning Center, 2028 G Street NW, Room LLC006
WTO Government Procurement Agreement Members and Observers
According to press reports, the Trump administration is mulling an executive order that would trigger U.S. withdrawal from the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA). This free colloquium will assess the United States’ potential withdrawal from the GPA, which would deprive U.S. suppliers of a key point of access to public procurement markets internationally — although the GPA, experts note, has set global standards and opened an estimate $1.7 trillion dollars annually in business opportunities. The United States could forfeit access to important public procurement markets in Canada and many other countries, and the United States could lose its leadership role (which dates back to World War II) in shaping global standards in public procurement, even as more countries (such as Brazil) are joining the GPA.
Colloquium will be held downstairs at the GWU Law Learning Center – 2028 G Street NW (photo: Google)
Jean Heilman Grier is a leading internationally recognized expert on the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Government Procurement Agreement (GPA), bilateral and regional agreements, international trade negotiations and international procurement systems. She has more than 30 years of experience in international trade as a U.S. trade negotiator, lawyer, adviser and consultant, including as the government procurement negotiator for the U.S. government. For a decade, she represented the United States in the WTO Committee on Government Procurement where she played a leading role in the revision of the GPA and accessions to the Agreement. Since 2013, she has been the Trade Principal with Djaghe, LLC., where she advises and provides technical assistance to governments, international organizations, businesses and trade groups on international procurement and trade issues. She writes extensively on international procurement and other international trade topics, and maintains a blog, Perspectives on Trade, at http://trade.djaghe.com; there, she recently published a piece on the impacts that the United States leaving the GPA could have.
Robert Anderson
Robert Anderson is a teacher and independent researcher on matters relating to the multilateral trading system, competition policy and government procurement. He previously worked in the Secretariat of the World Trade Organization from 1997 through 2019, and held the position of Counsellor and Team Leader for Government Procurement and Competition Policy in the Organization from 2005 through 2019.
Current academic positions include that of Honorary Professor in the School of Law at the University of Nottingham (United Kingdom). Mr Anderson also is an external faculty member at the World Trade Institute, the University of Bern (Switzerland); the University of Rome Tor Vergata (Italy); and the Catholic University of Lyon (France). He also has been a guest speaker, on multiple occasions, in relevant courses of the George Washington University Law School (United States).
Roundtable Participants: Michael Bowsher QC (Monckton Chambers, London) – Andrea Sundstrand (University of Stockholm) – Pascal Friton (Blomstein, Berlin) – Paul Lalonde (Dentons, Toronto) – Colette Langos (University of Adelaide) – Christopher Yukins (GWU Law School)
Program information: Cassandra Crawford, ccrawford@law.gwu.edu
