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 This assessment is necessarily conducted on a case-by-case basis, taking into account diverse factors such as a trading partner's level of development, its international obligations and commitments, the concerns of rights holders and other interested parties, and the trade and investment policies of the United States. It is informed by the various cross-cutting issues and trends identified below in Section I – Developments in Intellectual Property Rights Protection and Enforcement. Each assessment is based upon the specific facts and circumstances that shape IPR protection and enforcement in a particular trading partner.

In the year ahead, USTR will continue to engage trading partners that are discussed in this Report. In preparation for, and in the course of, those interactions, USTR will:

 Engage with U.S. stakeholders, the U.S. Congress, and other interested parties to ensure that the U.S. Government's position is informed by the full range of views on the pertinent issues;

Conduct extensive discussions with individual trading partners regarding their respective IPR regimes;

Encourage trading partners to engage fully, and with the greatest degree of transparency, with the full range of stakeholders on IPR matters; and

Identify, where possible, appropriate ways in which the U.S. Government can be of assistance. (See Annex 2). 

USTR will conduct these discussions in a manner that both advances the policy goals of the United States and respects the importance of meaningful policy dialogue with U.S. trading partners. In addition, USTR will continue to work closely with other U.S. Government agencies to ensure consistency of U.S. trade policy objectives with other Administration policies.

The Special 301 Subcommittee reviewed 72 trading partners during the 2015 Special 301 process. The Subcommittee received stakeholder input on nearly 100 trading partners, but focused its review on those submissions that responded to the request set forth in the notice published in the Federal Register to identify whether a particular trading partner should be named as a Priority Foreign Country (PFC), placed on the Priority Watch List (PWL) or Watch List (WL), or not listed in the Report. Following extensive research and analysis, USTR has listed 37 trading partners as follows:

Priority Watch List: Algeria; Argentina; Chile; China; Ecuador; India; Indonesia; Kuwait; Pakistan; Russia; Thailand; Ukraine; and Venezuela; and 3