US trade representative Susan C. Schwab announced that the Bush administration will begin the second phase of its review – the first in 20 years – of the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program, which provides preferential duty-free treatment for goods like gem & jewellery and textiles from 133 beneficiary developing countries like India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa. The announcement comes within days of an unsuccessful Doha round of global trade talks, during which, developing nations failed to agree on tariff concessions under the GSP%% The US has asked for public comments by September 5, 2006, on whether the duty-free trade benefits should be limited, suspended or withdrawn for those GSP beneficiaries whose shipments to the US exceeded $100 million in 2005 and met one of two criteria. The other two criteria included a classification of ‘upper-middle-income economy’ by the World Bank in 2005, and a share of over 0.25 per cent of all global exports last year. The countries that meet the criteria are Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Philippines, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela