U.S. ASKS CONGRESS TO REVISE TARIFF CATEGORIES The Administration asked Congress to replace the U.S. tariff schedule with a new system to bring it into line with international tariff categories, U.S. Trade Representative Clayton Yeutter said. The new system will add such items as fiber optics and more accurately define new composites, items not widely traded when the current schedule was devised some 30 years ago. Yeutter said the Harmonized System, as the new schedule is called, will change tariff categories and definitions to meet the present-day needs of exporters and importers, but they should pay about the same rates of duties. Yeutter said, "American exporters will find it far easier to deal with one standardized worldwide system than the variety of differing systems which they now face." He said the new system ended 12 years of multinational negotiations to create the unified tariff schedule. Yeutter said government and business moves are based on data from tariff schedules and the new system will improve knowledge of trade flows and the quality of decision-making. He said 56 nations pledged to bring their standards under the new system, with about half expected to join the system by January 1988.