| The World Trade Organization (WTO ) was established in 1995. WTO has not existed for long, but its predecessor GATT ( General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade ) , from which the WTO has inherited its essence existed almost half a century, which aims to reach free-trade goal in way of reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers in order to build up an integrated, transparent and sustained multilateral international trade system. As a partner to International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, it forms the " three pillars" to the world economy and contributes lots to the development to the stabilities of order as well as the growth of world economy.From the Kennedy Ro'und on, a series of agreements about non-tariff measures came forth in GATT/WTO. It's a signal that GATT/WTO changed its object from tariff barriers to non-tariff barriers. This change interested some academic scholars, whose research focus mainly on economic quantitative analysis. This dissertation aims from some aspects, for example historical development, economic and legal theories and policies and practices, and using normative and positive or general and detailed method, to expound and research non-tariff measures (abbreviated as " NTMs " ) compositely.The first chapter of this dissertation introduces the basic meaning, classification and characters of non-tariff measures. Making use of information and data of Chinese and foreign authoritative institution and academic literatures we survey a general situation of non-tariff barriers in the main developed west countries and china and their influences on international trade. It's also absolutely necessary to review the historical development of regulation of NTMs by GATT/WTO.The second chapter is about the theory background of non-tariff policies. The mentioned include dispute between free trade andprotective trade policies, game theory, interest group theory ( by Olson ) and public choice theory. These theories are mainly used to answer two questions on " How to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of NTMs" and " Why NTMs exist in so many countries despite their obvious disadvantages ". In all these above-mentioned analysis economic analyses are used for reference and their logic jumping-off point is the concept of " utility ". But from the view of some other legal concepts like " right ", " authority " and so on there is still another road to carry through this analysis just as professor Mc. Gee has done. The conclusion of the analysis are in spite of the necessity of NTMs they have a trend to be abused and transformed into non-tariff barriers ( NTBs ). This will reduce the whole social welfares especially under the influence of interest groups and politicians with self-interested goal. Artificially removing some treasures from some pockets to others is a tort. Based on the above analysis a theoretical frame for the explanation of NTMs will be hopefully founded.The third chapter of this dissertation sums up a few basic principles of the regulation of NTMs by GATT/WTO, which are non-discrimination, transparent, priority to procedural rules and special treatment of developing countries. Although some of these principles have been concluded as general principles of GATT/WTO, it's all the same necessary to research them in association with NTMs. These principles are absolutely important to not only the formulation of WTO rules but also to the settlement of specific cases, because they represent the identity of some world-applied values like freedom, democracy, equality and so on.The fourth chapter of this dissertation introduces a variety of NTMs agreements of WTO, and also analyses different questions in theseagreements. These questions consist of three kinds, which include concrete and abstract questions like the rationality of some measures or their meaning and purpose to our society. Through the analysis to these questions the rational boundary of NTMs can be better understand. The conclusions are that the rationality of NTMs has a lot to do with its goal. The practices of e...
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