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impose trade sanctions if the commitments of a bilateral agreement are not met. As noted above, significant progress on IPR enforcement is now beginning to occur in China.
Ambassador Barshefsky announced placement of 15 trading partners on the Special 301 Priority Watch List. One of these trading partners -- Bulgaria -- will be subject to review during the course of the year to evaluate progress made in the next several months. Other trading partners on the Priority Watch List include Israel, Macao, Argentina, Ecuador, Egypt, the European Union, Greece, India, Indonesia, Russia, Turkey, Italy, Dominican Republic, and Kuwait.
The USTR also announced placement of 32 trading partners on the Watch List, and that "out-of-cycle" reviews would be conducted with four of these trading partners -- Hong Kong, Colombia, Jordan, and Vietnam.
Other out-of-cycle reviews may be conducted as necessary.
Details of Ambassador Barshefsky's Special 301 decisions are provided in the attached Fact Sheet.
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