U.s. Morocco Free Trade Agreement

(b) for each claim, the pro­vi­sion of this agree­ment, the invest­ment autho­riza­tion or invest­ment agree­ment, which would have been vio­lat­ed, and any oth­er rel­e­vant pro­vi­sion; In 2005, Moroc­co ranked 89th in U.S. dol­lars among U.S. trade importers and 79th among U.S. exporters. This rep­re­sents U.S. trade with Moroc­co of less than 0.1% of its total imports and exports. In 2003, Moroc­co export­ed about 2.9% of its total exports to the Unit­ed States, while it import­ed about 4.1% of its total imports from the Unit­ed States. These fig­ures show that U.S. trade with Moroc­co is almost nil com­pared to Moroc­can trade with the Unit­ed States. As a result, the USMFTA could have a much greater impact on the Moroc­can government.

Reaf­firm­ing its com­mit­ment to trans­paren­cy and the desire to elim­i­nate cor­rup­tion in inter­na­tion­al trade and inter­na­tion­al invest­ment, with the aim of pro­mot­ing cre­ativ­i­ty and inno­va­tion and pro­mot­ing trade in goods and ser­vices sub­ject to intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights; Strength­en the devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of labour and envi­ron­men­tal and envi­ron­men­tal leg­is­la­tion and poli­cies, pro­mote work­ers‘ fun­da­men­tal rights and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, and imple­ment the agree­ment in a man­ner con­sis­tent with envi­ron­men­tal and con­ser­va­tion pro­tec­tion; Reaf­firm­ing its desire to cre­ate a free trade area for the Unit­ed States, the Mid­dle East and North Africa, thus con­tribut­ing to region­al inte­gra­tion and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, the joint com­mit­tee estab­lished by the ESTV held its third meet­ing in Decem­ber 2012. At the meet­ing, the Unit­ed States and Moroc­co announced agree­ment on three new ini­tia­tives: an agree­ment on trade facil­i­ta­tion, com­mon prin­ci­ples for inter­na­tion­al invest­ment and com­mon prin­ci­ples for infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) ser­vices. U.S. and Moroc­can experts dis­cussed issues relat­ed to the imple­men­ta­tion of the free trade agree­ment, includ­ing tech­ni­cal bar­ri­ers to trade, health and plant health issues, and tech­ni­cal assis­tance to sup­port the imple­men­ta­tion of the work and envi­ron­men­tal pro­vi­sions of the free trade agree­ment. The two sides also dis­cussed the next steps in imple­ment­ing the 2011 Anti-Coun­ter­feit­ing Trade Agree­ment (ACAC). Moroc­co joined the Unit­ed States in the sign­ing of ACTA, an agree­ment that will strength­en the stan­dard for the appli­ca­tion of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights at the inter­na­tion­al lev­el. Recog­nis­ing Morocco‘s com­mit­ment to demand reforms to improve the lives of its peo­ple; improv­ing liv­ing stan­dards, pro­mot­ing eco­nom­ic growth and sta­bil­i­ty, cre­at­ing new employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties and improv­ing the com­mon good in their ter­ri­to­ries through the lib­er­al­iza­tion and expan­sion of trade and invest­ment between them; The desire to improve the com­pet­i­tive­ness of their com­pa­nies in glob­al mar­kets; estab­lish clear rules for their trade and invest­ments that take into account the inter­ests of both par­ties and thus pro­mote a pre­dictable and mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial busi­ness envi­ron­ment; Deter­mined to pro­mote bilat­er­al coop­er­a­tion, while tak­ing into account the dif­fer­ences between lev­els of devel­op­ment and the size of their economies; Reaf­firm­ing its com­mit­ment to facil­i­tate trade between them by remov­ing bar­ri­ers to bilat­er­al trade, on the basis of its rights and oblig­a­tions under the WTO agree­ment and oth­er agree­ments to which both sides are par­ties; in the begon) lib­er­al­iza­tion and expan­sion of bilat­er­al agri­cul­tur­al trade and bilat­er­al invest­ment, there­by strength­en­ing their com­pet­i­tive­ness, pro­mot­ing rur­al devel­op­ment and improv­ing pros­per­i­ty in their ter­ri­to­ries; in the desire to pro­tect the san­i­tary con­di­tions of humans, ani­mals and plants in the ter­ri­to­ries of the con­tract­ing par­ties, to improve the imple­men­ta­tion of the SPS Con­ven­tion by the con­tract­ing par­ties and to cre­ate a forum to address health and plant health issues between the con­tract­ing par­ties and thus expand trade oppor­tu­ni­ties; c) imple­men­ta­tion or assis­tance in imple­ment­ing acco imple­men­ta­tion measures