U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk promised the reports in a speech last summer and made good on that promise Wednesday with new studies on technical barriers to trade and on barriers linked to sanitation and health concerns.

The reports point to progress in overcoming some technical trade barriers, including China’s decision last year to scrap a requirement for imported and domestically produced software to include Chinese-made Internet filtering software known as Green Dam. Government and industry leaders from the U.S. and other countries balked at the requirement and China announced in June that it would suspend it indefinitely.

The administration also hailed China for consolidating duplicative oversight of medical devices and for rejecting a registration plan that the U.S. said had the potential to block or delay sales of safe, high-quality medical devices to the Chinese market.

Lingering problems on the technical front include U.S. access to the European market, where stricter registration requirements for chemicals take effect in November, the administration said in its report.

On the sanitation front, the reports note U.S. trade, agriculture and other officials helped end bans on imports of U.S. pork and pork products sparked by unfounded concerns that pork might be linked to the H1N1 flu virus, dubbed “swine flu.”

Dozens of countries that bought more than $900 million of U.S. pork and pork products in 2008 imposed bans on U.S. pork and pork products after the H1N1 flu emerged in the U.S. However, nearly all of them abandoned the bans after being urged to base such decisions on scientific evidence, the administration said.

The reports highlight continuing sore points, including the debate over ractopamine, a veterinary drug approved for use in the U.S. and elsewhere on pigs, cattle and turkeys. Despite scientific evidence attesting to the drug’s safety, the administration said a number of U.S. trading partners continue to ban imports of pork and pork products containing residues of ractopamine, posing a significant barrier to trade in such products.

The report said the U.S. is continuing to work to remove these restrictions on the drug–an additive that promotes leanness in meat–along with restrictions on imports of U.S. cattle and beef products linked to concerns about bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or “mad cow” disease.