Is There a Free Trade Agreement Between the UAE and the USA?

There is no free trade agreement between the United Arab Emirates and the United States. Not in force, not signed, and not — on anything either government publishes — currently under negotiation. Checked on 21 August 2026.

The negative holds from both ends, which is what makes it safe to state.

From the UAE side, the United States does not appear anywhere in the trade agreement architecture. The Ministry of Foreign Trade's Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement index has a page for each partner country and there is no United States page. The Ministry of Economy and Tourism's GCC free trade agreements material does not name it either.

From the United States side, the position is stated explicitly. The US Department of Commerce's country commercial guide for the UAE records that the United States began negotiating a free trade agreement with the UAE in March 2005; that in early 2007 both countries announced they would not be able to complete negotiations within the existing trade promotion authority timeframe, while remaining committed to completing them later; and that no further free trade agreement negotiations have taken place.

That is the whole story. A negotiation that opened twenty-one years ago and stopped nineteen years ago is not an agreement, and a commitment to resume "later" that has not been acted on is not a negotiation in progress.

Three instruments circulate and none of them is a free trade agreement. Knowing which is which matters, because each is regularly described in secondary coverage as though it created tariff preferences. None does.

The Trade and Investment Framework Agreement, signed 15 March 2004. The Office of the United States Trade Representative described it at signature as a forum for the two countries to examine ways to expand bilateral trade and investment, establishing a joint council for that purpose. A framework for talking is not a schedule of tariff concessions.

The US–GCC Framework Agreement for Trade, Economic, Investment and Technical Cooperation. The UAE became party to it in 2012 as a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Again a framework, again at the bloc level, again no tariff preference.

The US–UAE Economic Policy Dialogue, running since 2012. A dialogue.

One thing we will not do on this page is convert a headline into an agreement. Announcements of investment pledges, sectoral cooperation or ministerial visits are not trade agreements, and there is a persistent pattern of them being reported as though they were. If an agreement is ever concluded it will appear on the Ministry of Foreign Trade's CEPA index with an entry-into-force date, in the same form as the other eighteen.

For most UAE importers, less than you would think — because the charge that hurts is the one no agreement would have removed anyway.

Customs duty. Goods of US origin enter the UAE at the ordinary rate, because there is no preference to claim. The standard rate published by the UAE Government portal is 5% of the CIF value — cost, insurance and freight — with 50% on alcohol and 100% on cigarettes. Classification and the duty actually assessed are decided by the customs authority at your port of entry.

VAT. Unchanged either way. Import VAT is charged at 5% on the value in Article 35(1) of the VAT Law: the customs value including insurance, freight, any customs fees and any excise tax paid, with VAT itself excluded from the base. That is the same base whether the goods came from Texas or from Mumbai under a CEPA. A preferential tariff shrinks the base slightly by removing duty from it; it never removes the VAT.

A registrant accounts for import VAT through its own return under Article 48. A person not registered for tax settles at the date of import under Article 49, and the tax must reach the Federal Tax Authority before customs will release the goods.

Services bought from a US supplier. Also unchanged. Where a UAE taxable person buys a service from a supplier with no place of residence in the UAE, Article 48 puts the tax on the recipient: you account for the output tax on your own return and recover it as input tax to the extent you are entitled. Software subscriptions, professional fees and cloud services from US vendors are the everyday case, and they are the most commonly missed item on a UAE VAT return.

One 2026 change to note: Federal Decree-Law No. 16 of 2025 removed the requirement to issue a self-invoice on a reverse-charge supply. The obligation to account for the tax, and to hold the supplier's invoice as evidence, both survive.

The three most-searched comparisons alongside the United States, each with the status published on the partner's own Ministry of Foreign Trade page.

The method takes a few minutes and it is the one used to build this page. Trade agreement status changes, and a page that was right in August 2026 will not stay right indefinitely.

Three refusals, each because the answer could not be verified from a primary source on 21 August 2026.

We do not publish a US tariff rate on UAE-origin goods. Tracker sites quote one; no US government source was opened to confirm it. Tariffs on exports into the United States are a matter for US Customs and Border Protection, and getting that number wrong prices a shipment wrong.

We do not describe any current UAE–USA trade negotiation. Reports exist that the UAE is pursuing a bilateral arrangement. No primary government source on either side says so, and the US Department of Commerce guide says the opposite: no further negotiations have taken place since 2007.

We do not publish tariff schedules from any agreement the UAE does have. Product-level concessions live in the annexes to each agreement and are applied by customs against a classification, not against a summary.

What this page does state plainly, because it is in the primary text, is the tax position — and the tax position is the same either way. Whatever happens at the customs line, imported goods carry 5% VAT on the Article 35(1) value and imported services carry the Article 48 reverse charge.