Legal Issues On Rules Of Origin

In brief, rules of origin are those national and international laws, regulations and administrative determinations of general application applied by any country to determine the origin of goods. In the international trade, it is a very important legal tie. Almost every significant legal system contains the factor of origin including most-favored-nation treatment, national treatment, government procurement, anti-dumping, countervailing, safeguard measures, generalized system of preference. Depending on this system, countries carry out these legal systems. Because of the significance of rules of origin, most of countries (groups) issue different rules of origin based on different interest. They also relate rules of origin with trade policies in order to make it into policy instrument pursuing economic goals. Thereupon, rules of origin has change from a pure technical customs issue into one of the non-tariff barriers to some extent. It has developed into a very important system that affects economic interests of one country. This dissertation tries to have a breakthrough analysis on the achievements and flaws of WTO and the rules of origin of China by expatiating on the basic theory of rules of origin. Hope to clue something valuable on how rules of origin works continuously in the international trade. This dissertation can be divided into three chapters as follows. Chapter I teases and analyses deeply in the conception of rules of origin, the classification of rules of origin and the role of rules of origin. Based on the main fruits of former study and the own study of author, it tries to make the frame of rules of origin more clear and substantial. Rules of origin could be defined as those laws, regulations and administrative determinations of general application applied by any counties to determine the origin of goods in WTO . From this conception, we could find out two points. One is rules of origin was defined as rules of goods origin in a narrow sense. The other is that rules of origin is not only the law named rules of origin but all of laws, regulations, administrative determinations of general application concerning rules of origin. Rules of origin could be classified different category based on different standard: classified rules of origin for imports and rules of origin for exports based on flow of goods; classified rules of goods origin and rules of service origin based on applied object; classified wholly obtained rules of origin and part rules of origin based on composing of product; classified preferential rules of origin and non-preferential rules of origin based on applied field; classified country rules of origin and region rules of origin based on applied scope. In the positive and negative roles of rules of origin aspect, the author has idiographic opinion. Explaining in detail is that this part doesn't limit to the basic function of rules of origin as a technical regulation including affording legal gist for carrying out differential duties and non-tariff trade barriers and promulgating trade policies in the international trade. This chapter gives up the recapitulative significances or roles. It expatiates the roles of rules of origin by combining the systems and policies that rules of origin served instead. The positive roles involve that rules of origin could accelerate the industrialization development of developing counties in generalized system of preference; rules of origin could attract and speed foreign investments; rules of origin could introduce high technology and protect the rights of consumers effectively. But on the other hand, rules of origin also has negative roles including some country abuses rule of origin lead to making it into recessive tariff barriers, which block the development of economic freely; rules of origin tends to disperse resource re-distribution in economic filed of country; rules of origin would increase cost of product; rules of origin tends to make trade diversion and limit trade creation. Chapter II introduces the development of international agreements about rules of origin, among of which analyses and studies WTO emphatically. It probes into good effects and flaws of and evaluates exactly the international harmonization of non-preferential rules of origin. The agreements concerning rules of origin in the world before comes on involve GATT1947 and , the former didn't promulgate rules of origin definitely but contained articles of forecasting the necessary of rules of origin; the latter only enacted normal articles and proposal articlesfor members to refer to and choose freely. They didn't constitute uniform rules of origin. was subscribed on April in 1994, which regulated concretely tenets, principles and disciplines to govern the application of rules of origin; definitions and coverage of rules of origin; procedural arrangements on notification, review, consultation and dispute settlement; objectives, work programme and organizations on harmonization of rules of origin. is the most important fruit in harmonizing rules of origin all over the world for many years, which has tremendous positive effects: it is the symbol of making a breakthrough development in harmonizing rules of origin all over the world; it presents guide principles for harmonizing rules of origin; it enacts preliminarily the core of rules of origin—criteria of rules of origin; it stipulates the operational mechanism, harmonization procedure and dispute settlement procedure of rules of origin; it establishes a Committee on Rules of Origin to reviewing and furthering the harmonization of rules of origin; it establishes a Technical Committee on Rules of Origin who in charge of technical work related to rules of origin. However, trying to constitute the acceptable, consistent, impartial and transparent rules of origin is not very easy. There are some flaws in as follows: doesn't come to the consensus of criteria of rules of origin, the form of rules of origin certificate and authentication. Especially members disagree the frondose technical criteria of substantial transformation, which leaves possibility for actualizing protectionism by making use of rules of origin freely; is short of the binding force of preferential rules of origin in regional economic group; doesn't touch upon the service trade and anti-circumvention. Because of technical complexity of drafting out rules of origin for every tariff classification and the great difference in trade policies position concerning non-preferential rules of origin, the harmonization of rules of origin doesn't make breakthrough progress up to the present. Chapter III dissertates rules of origin in our country. The old rules of origin are the General...