WTO概论复习资料

Let’s Talk about Trade Policy and Trade Issues

MD, who else?

I Preliminary Knowledge

1 Tariff

(1)Specific Tariff(从量关税)

Weight, quantity, volume

(2)Ad Valorem Tariff(从价关税)

A percentage of the price

(3)pound Tariff(复合关税)

A mixture of specific tariff and ad valorem tariff

2 Non-tariff

(1)Quota

(2)License(进口许可证)

General license and specific license; usually bined with quota, bidding

(3)Custom Valuation

(4)Technical Barriers

(5)Environment issues

(6)GMO(Genetically Modified Organism,转基因生物)

3 VER & VIE

(1)VER(Voluntary Export Restriction)

(2)VIE(Voluntary Import Expansion)

Aiming at trade balance, either domestic or foreign、

II GATT & Agreements

1 Historical Perspective of WTO

(1)Havana Charter (→GATT 1947)

a)Background: protectionism after WW II, Great Depression, need to

establish ITO (International Trade Organization);

b)The charter is mainly about trade and mercial policies, employment,

economic activities, economic reconstruction, investment, restrictive

business practice;

c)Failed to meet some countries’ interest, but much content of mercial

policy survived in GATT 1947, provisional rather than legal;

(2)Marrakesh Agreements (establishing WTO)

a)The importance of Uruguay Round on Marrakesh Agreements and the

establishment of WTO;

b)Including Agreements about [trade in modity, GATS, TRIPs],

DSU(Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement

of Disputes), TPRM, PTA(Plurilateral Trade Agreements);

c)Entered into force on 1 Jan、1995, 128 GATT signatories;

d)160 members since 26 Jun、2014

2 GATT 1947

(1)Basic Principles of WTO

a)Nondiscrimination(MFN, NT), Graduation Clause

b)Trade Liberalization(tariff, non-tariff, market access)

c)Transparence

d)Fair petition

(2)MFN clause---Article I

a)Most-Favored-Nation Treatment(MFN): any advantage, favor, privilege

or immunity granted by any contracting party to any product shall be

accorded immediately and unconditionally to the like product of all other

contracting parties;

b)Accord the basic principles, nondiscrimination, promote trade

liberalization as it’s Multilateral;

c)Exceptions: GSP, FTA, Anti-dumping、safety issues, etc、

d)China’s benefits: double-edged sword;

(3)National Treatment---Article III

a)National Treatment on Internal Taxation and Regulation: the contracting

parties should treat imported products and domestic products equally in

terms of internal taxes and/or other internal charges, laws, regulations,

and requirements;

b)Exceptions: government procurement, domestic subsidies, etc、

c)Preference Policy and NT: depending on different industries;

(4)Anti-dumping---Article VI

a)Dumping: products of one country are exported to another country at a

price less than the normal value, and is causes or threatens material

injury to the importer’s industry;

b)“normal value” is defined by the parable price, in the ordinary course of

trade, for the like product for consumption in the exporting country; or if

domestic price not available: the highest parable price for the like

product exported to a third country, or the cost of the product plus a

reasonable additional for selling and profit;

c)Determinants in dumping: Dumping Margin and Material Injury

(5)Rule of Origin(RoO)---Article IX

a)Marks of Origin: marks, characters, patterns, etc、that indicate the

original country/region of an imported product or service;

b)Article 7: contracting parties cooperate to minimize the difficulties, and

to prevent misrepresent of the true origin;

c)Determining origin and whether “substantial transformation”:

value-added, process test, change in tariff classification(CTC);

d)Controversial issue on trade balance: different standards to determine

origin and processing trade;

e)MFN or not determined by the origin of the product;

(6)Administration of Trade Regulations---Article X

a)Publication: laws, regulations, judicial decisions and administrative

rulings of general application about international trade (e、g、custom

classification and valuation, rates of duty/taxes, requirements,

restrictions, etc、) shall be published promptly to enable traders bee

acquainted with them;

b)Administration: contracting parties shall maintain, or institute judicial,

arbitral, or administrative procedures to deal with custom matters, and

administrate laws, regulations in a uniform and reasonable way;

(7)QRs(Quantitative Restrictions)---Article XI

a)Elimination of QRs: except duties, taxes or other charges, contracting

parties shall eliminate restrictions made effect through quotas, licenses

or other measures、

b)Exceptions: food, agriculture or fisheries product、(shortage or surplus)

(8)General Exceptions---Article XX

a)Protect public morals;

b)Protect human, animal or plant life or health;

c)Trade relating to gold or silver;

d)Secure pliance with laws or regulations consistent with the provisions

(e、g、intellectual property);

e)Prison labor products;

f)National treasures;

g)Exhaustible resources;

h)Intergovernmental modity agreement that are approved;

i)Ensure essential domestic quantities;

j)General or local short supply;

(9)State Trading Enterprise---Article XVII

a)Contracting parties can establish or maintain state enterprises, but they

shall act in a manner consistent with general principles of

non-discriminatory treatment for governmental measures affecting trades

by private traders;

b)Such enterprises shall make purchases or sales solely in accordance with

mercial considerations, including price, quality, availability,

transportation, etc、

c)Contracting parties shall not prevent enterprises from acting in

accordance with the principles;

(10)S ubsidies---Article XVI

a)Subsidies in General: when granting any subsidies, contracting parties

shall notify other parties in writing of the extent, nature, estimated effect

and necessity;

b)In case of serious prejudice, the contracting party granting the subsidy

shall discuss with other parties about the possibility of limiting the

subsidization;

c)Additional Provisions: parties shall seek to avoid the use of subsidies on

the export of primary products, or the subsidy shall not increase the

party’s equitable share of the world export in that product;

(11)I mplemental Mechanism---Article XXIV

a)Territorial Application-Frontier Traffic-Customs Unions-Free Trade

Areas, an exception of MFN

(12)G SP(Generalized System of Preference)

a)Between developed countries and developing countries;

b)Nondiscrimination, unilateral;

(13)H istory: China’s reenter in GATT

a)An original contracting party;

b)Suspended its eligibility as a contracting party in 1950;

c)Taiwan: observer to GATT in 1965;

d)China’s efforts to r eenter in 1986;

e)plexity of China’s relevance to GATT;

3 GATT 1994

(1)The framework of UR

a)Agreements about [trade in modity, GATS, TRIPs],

b)DSU(Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement

of Disputes),

c)TPRMs

d)PTA (Plurilateral Trade Agreements);

(2)The initiatives of WTO

a)Principles?

(3)Legal instruments under GATT 1947

a)Tariff concession;

b)Protocols of accession;

c)Waiver granted under Article 25

(4)Understanding on Paragraph1(2) Article II

a)Aims at promoting the transparency of the rights and obligations;

b)Agreement to record in national schedules “other duties or

charges”(which shall be exempted) levied in addition to the recorded

tariff, and to bind them at the levels prevailing at the date established in

the UR Protocol;

(5)Understanding on Article XVII

a)To promote the transparency of state-trading enterprises’ activities,

contracting parties shall report such enterprises to the mittee, regardless

of whether export has happened or not;

b)Increase surveillance of enterprises’ activities through stronger

notification and review procedures;

(6)Understanding on Article XVIII

a)Article 18: for the Balance-of-Payment(BOP) and development of

economy, especially for the less developed countries, tariff protection

and QRs can be imposed;

b)The schedule for the restriction measures on import shall be notified as

soon as possible;

c)Contracting parties imposing restrictions for BOP purposes shall do so in

the least trade-disruptive manner, and shall favor price-based measures,

like import surcharges and import deposits, rather than quantitative

restrictions、

d)Agreement is also on procedure for consultations by GATT BOP mittee,

as well as for notification、

(7)Understanding on Article XXIV

a)Clarify and reinforce the standard and procedures for the review of new

or enlarged custom unions or FTA and for the evaluation of their effects

on third parties;

b)Clarify the procedure to be followed for achieving any necessary

pensatory adjustment in the event of contracting parties forming a

customs union seeking to increase a bound tariff;

c)The obligations of contracting parties in regard to measures taken by

regional or local governments or authorities within territories are also

clarified;

4 Other Agreements

(1)Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade(TBT,技术性贸易壁垒协议)

a)Narrow TBT: processing and production methods related to the

characteristics of the product itself;

b)Dilemma on Broad TBT: needs for industrialization vs、potentiality

toward protection;

c)This agreement will extend and clarify the Agreement on Technical

Barriers to Trade reached in the Tokyo Round、It seeks to ensure that

technical negotiations and standards, as well as testing and certification

procedures, do not create unnecessary obstacles to trade、However, it

recognizes that countries have the right to establish protection, at levels they

consider appropriate, for example for human, animal or plant life or health or

the environment, and should not be prevented from taking measures necessary to ensure those levels of protection are met、The agreement therefore

encourages countries to use international standards where these are

appropriate, but it does not require them to change their levels of protection as

a result of standardization、

Innovative features of the revised agreement are that it covers processing and production methods related to the characteristics of the product itself、

The coverage of conformity assessment procedures is enlarged and the

disciplines made more precise、Notification provisions applying to local

government and non-governmental bodies are elaborated in more detail than

in the Tokyo Round agreement、A Code of Good Practice for the

Preparation, Adoption and Application of Standards by standardizing bodies,

which is open to acceptance by private sector bodies as well as the public

sector, is included as an annex to the agreement、

(2)Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary

Measures(SPS,实施动植物卫生检疫措施协议)

a)Specific in the protection of human health and ecological balance,

(3)Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures(TRIMs,与贸易有关

得投资措施协议)

a)This Agreement, negotiated during the Uruguay Round, applies only to

measures that affect trade in goods、Recognizing that certain investment

measures can have trade-restrictive and distorting effects, it states that no

Member shall apply a measure that is prohibited by the provisions of

GATT Article III (national treatment) or Article XI (quantitative

restrictions)、Examples of inconsistent measures, as spelled out in the

Annex‘s Illustrative List, include local content or trade balancing

requirements、The Agreement contains transitional arrangements

allowing Members to maintain notified TRIMs for a limited time

following the entry into force of the WTO 。The Agreement also

establishes a mittee on TRIMs to monitor the operation and

implementation of these mitments、

(4)Agreement on Agriculture(农业协议)

a)Long-term objectives: substantial progressive reduction in agricultural

support;

b) A decisive move towards the objective of increased market orientation in

agricultural trade;

c)Total AMS(Aggregate Measure of Support): covers all support provided

on either a product-specific or non-product-specific basis;

d)Market access---tariffication: non-tariff border measures are replaced by

tariffs that provide substantially same level of protection; Tariff-quota:

under 10% & outside 80%;

e)Domestic support---amber, blue, green box、

f)Amber box:All domestic support measures considered to distort

production and trade (with some exceptions) fall into the amber box,

which is defined in Article 6 of the Agriculture Agreement as all

domestic supports except those in the blue and green boxes、These

include measures to support prices, or subsidies directly related to

production quantities、These supports are subject to limits: “de

minimis” minimal supports are allowed (5% of agricultural production

for developed countries, 10% for developing countries); the 30 WTO

members that had larger subsidies than the de minimis levels at the

beginning of the post-Uruguay Round reform period are mitted to reduce

these subsidies、

g)Blue Box:This is the “amber box with conditions” — conditions

designed to reduce distortion、Any support that would normally be in

the amber box, is placed in the blue box if the support also requires

farmers to limit production (details set out in Paragraph 5 of Article 6 of

the Agriculture Agreement)、At present there are no limits on

spending on blue box subsidies、In the current negotiations, some

countries want to keep the blue box as it is because they see it as a

crucial means of moving away from distorting amber box subsidies

without causing too much hardship、Others wanted to set limits or

reduction mitments, some advocating moving these supports into the

amber box、

h)Green Box: In order to qualify, green box subsidies must not distort trade,

or at most cause minimal distortion (paragraph 1)、They have to be

government-funded (not by charging consumers higher prices) and must

not involve price support、They tend to be programmes that are not

targeted at particular products, and include direct ine supports for

farmers that are not related to (are “decoupled” from) current production

levels or prices、They also include environmental protection and

regional development programmes、“Green box” subsidies are therefore

allowed without limits, provided they ply with the policy-specific criteria

set out in Annex 2、In the current negotiations, some countries

argue that some of the subsidies listed in Annex 2 might not meet the

criteria of the annex’s first paragraph — because of the large amounts

paid, or because of the nature of these subsidies, the trade distortion they

cause might be more than minimal、Among the subsidies under

discussion here are: direct payments to producers (paragraph 5),

including decoupled ine support (paragraph 6), and government financial

support for ine insurance and ine safety-net programmes (paragraph 7),

and other paragraphs、Some other countries take the opposite view —

that the current criteria are adequate, and might even need to be made

more flexible to take better account of non-trade concerns such as

environmental protection and animal welfare、

i)Export petition: Members are required to reduce the value of mainly

direct export subsidies to a level 36 per cent below the 1986-90 base

period level over the six-year implementation period, and the quantity of

subsidized exports by 21 per cent over the same period、

(5)Agreement on Textiles and Clothing(纺织品与服装协议)

a)MFA(Multifibre Arrangement): Up to the end of the Uruguay Round,

textile and clothing quotas were negotiated bilaterally and governed by

the rules of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA)、This provided for the

application of selective quantitative restrictions when surges in imports

of particular products caused, or threatened to cause, serious damage to

the industry of the importing country、The Multifibre Arrangement was

a major departure from the basic GATT rules and particularly the

principle of non-discrimination、On 1 January 1995 it was replaced by

the WTO Agreement on Textiles and Clothing which sets out a

transitional process for the ultimate removal of these quotas、

b)ATC(Agreement on Textiles and Clothing) is a transitional instrument

built on the following key elements:

(a) the product coverage, basically enpassing yarns, fabrics,

made-up textile products and clothing;

(b) a programme for the progressive integration of these textile and

clothing products into GATT 1994 rules;

(c) a liberalization process to progressively enlarge existing quotas

(until they are removed) by increasing annual growth rates at each

stage;

(d) a special safeguard mechanism to deal with new cases of serious

damage or threat thereof to domestic producers during the transition

period;

(e) establishment of a Textiles Monitoring Body (“TMB”) to

supervise the implementation of the Agreement and ensure that the

rules are faithfully followed; and

(f) other provisions, including rules on circumvention of the quotas,

their administration, treatment of non-MFA restrictions, and

mitments undertaken elsewhere under the WTO's agreements and

procedures affecting this sector、

c)Secure the eventual integration of the textiles and clothing

sector(MFA)into the GATT on the basis of strengthened GATT rules and

disciplines

(6)General Agreement on Trade in Service(GATS,服务贸易总协定)

a)For the purposes of this Agreement, trade in services is defined as the

supply of a service:

(a) from the territory of one Member into the territory of any other

Member;

(b) in the territory of one Member to the service consumer of any other

Member;

(c) by a service supplier of one Member, through mercial presence in the

territory of any other Member;

(d) by a service supplier of one Member, through presence of natural

persons of a Member in the territory of any other Member、

b)The scope of trade in service:

services supplied from the territory of one party to the territory of another (e、g、international telephone calls), officially known as “cross-border supply”

services supplied in the territory of one party to the consumers of any other (for example, tourism); ), officially “consumption abroad”

services provided through the presence of service providing entities of one party in the territory of any other (for example, banking) (e、g、foreign banks setting up operations in a country), officially “mercial presence”

individuals travelling from their own country to supply services in another (e、g、fa shion models or consultants), officially “presence of natural persons”

(7)Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property

Rights(TRIPs,与贸易有关得知识产权协议)

1、Copyright and Related Rights

2、Trademarks

3、Geographical Indications

4、Industrial Designs

5、Patents

6、Layout-Designs (Topographies) of Integrated Circuits

7、Protection of Undisclosed Information

8、Control of Anti-petitive Practices in Contractual Licenses

(8)Trade Policy Review Machanism(TPRM,贸易政策审议机制)

a)An agreement confirms the Trade Policy Review Mechanism, introduced

at the time of the Mid-term Review, and encourages greater transparency

in national trade policy-making、A further Ministerial decision reforms

the notification requirements and procedures generally、

b)The objectives of the TPRM, as expressed in Annex 3 of the Marrakesh

Agreement, include facilitating the smooth functioning of the

multilateral trading system by enhancing the transparency of Members’

trade policies、

c)All WTO Members are subject to review under the TPRM、The Annex

mandates that the four Members with the largest shares of world trade

(currently the European munities, the United States, Japan and China) be

reviewed each two years, the next 16 be reviewed each four years, and

others be reviewed each six years、A longer period may be fixed for

least-developed country Members

5 New Issues: Doha Agenda

The Doha Round is the latest round of trade negotiations among the WTO membership、Its aim is to achieve major reform of the international trading system through the introduction of lower trade barriers and revised trade rules、The work programme covers about 20 areas of trade、The Round is also known semi-officially as the Doha Development Agenda as a fundamental objective is to improve the trading prospects of developing countries、

The Round was officially launched at the WTO’s Fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001、The Doha Ministerial Declaration provided the mandate for the negotiations, including on agriculture, services and an intellectual property topic, which began earlier、

In Doha, ministers also approved a decision on how to address the problems developing countries face in implementing the current WTO agreements、