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The Single Rule That Makes Your Phone Battery Cost Less
Description
Episode 70 of Global Trade with Fexingo zooms in on one obscure but massive trade rule: the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) of 1996 and its 2015 expansion. Lucas and Luna trace how a single zero-tariff commitment on 217 product categories collapsed the cost of lithium-ion batteries, semiconductors, and display panels — the guts of every smartphone. They walk through the surprising origin story (Singapore, not Geneva), the exact tariff reduction from 15% to zero, and what happens when a country like China uses rules of origin to game the system. The episode also explains why the WTO's failure to extend the ITA to new products — like EV batteries — is now a flashpoint in US-China trade tensions. A concrete, number-driven look at how one tariff line reshaped the device in your pocket.