A Preliminary Study On NAFTA's Preferential Rules Of Origin

Regional trade and multilateral trade are two main developing trends of nowday's world trade.Recently,especially after the failure of Doha negotiation, countries all quicken their speed in developing regional trade agreements.Our country is also making efforts to develop regional trade,eg:the build of China-ASEAN FTA and CEPA.The provision of Preferential Rules of Origin is essential for the construction of a FTA.It's the essence of a FTA.But there're no uniform regulations of Preferential Rules of Origin,and the various regulations constructed a "Spaghetti Bowl".Countries use Rules of Origin to achieve its policy goal and Rules of Origin is easy to become a trade protection tool.This article chooses NAFTA's Rules of Origin,whose regulation is very comprehensive,as our study object.Through thorough study,we hope to find its advantages and disadvantages and also the experiences for our FTA's development.Except for the preface and conclusion,this article contains four chapters:The first chapter:Summary of the Rules of Origin.Though the point is to analyze Preferential Rules of Origin,but knowing the general knowledge of Rules of Origin is helpful for our grasp of the whole article.This section reviewed the origin,development,meanings and classifications of Rules of Origin.Also the essence of Rules of Origin:the standards that are used to judge the origin of the goods and the function of the Rules of Origin are introduced.The second chapter:Discussed the related questions of NAFTA's Preferential Rules of Origin.The first section of this chapter gave the negotiating background of NAFTA's Preferential Rules of Origin and its significance:three countries' different opinions on the type of NAFTA's Preferential Rules of Origin and their reasons.The second section introduced the main contents and characteristics of NAFTA's Preferential Rules of Origin, especially its regulations about some special goods,eg:cars and textiles. The third chapter:This chapter analyzed the implementation effect of NAFTA's Preferential Rules of Origin.The first section of this chapter discussed the costs that brought about by the Preferential Rules of Origin.The second section analyzed the trade protection effect and investment diversion effect that brought about by the Preferential Rules of Origin.The third section discussed the utilization rate of NAFTA's Preferential Rule of Origin,and gave the reasons of this phenomenon.The fourth section make an evaluation of the influences that generated by NAFTA's Preferential Rules of Origin.The fourth chapter:Generalized the experiences that learned from NAFTA's Preferential Rules of Origin.The first section of this chapter introduced the main contents of our FTAs' Rule of Origin.The second section pointed out the disadvantages of our Rules of Origin and gave some advices on its improvement.