Study Of The Wto Trade Facilitation Rules

With GATT's success in cutting tariffs, as well as the official set up of the WTO, and the internationalization in the global trade, the global trade has become a trend to be free. While under this trend trade protectionism has never stopped and now it has changed its forms to be invisible ones which are greatly hindering the international trade. The difficult and opaque customs procedures, being an "invisible" barrier to trade, has gradually become the focus of the International economic organizations, governments and the Trade Circle, driving people to place higher premium on reasonable trade administrative procedures. The international economic organizations are endeavoring to reduce and discriminate obstacles that block the flow of goods, to cut cost of trade, and to build an easier, harmonious, and high efficient trade system."Trade facilitation", one of the important independent topics in Doha Negotiation Round, was approved by the WTO General Council on 1st August, 2004 in "Doha Package" and was decided to start negotiations based on Annex D. Negotiations at present has been pending after having entered the substantial stage to clarifying and improvement of the relating clauses.Trade Facilitation has great theoretical and practical meanings for China, a huge country with rapid growing foreign trade capacity.This article will set out from how the topic was brought forward and then introduces the existing regulations relating to Trade Facilitation. After careful analysis of the flaws to the existing Trade Facilitation regulations, the author brings forwards her suggestions on improving and perfecting the current Trade Facilitation regulations. Then great efforts are spent on discussing the important systems in Trade Facilitation negotiations such as "freedom of transit", "fees and formalities connected with import and export", "publication and administration of trade regulations", "need and priority identification" and "technique assistance and capacity building". Finally, the author makes an analysis of the opportunities and challenges in the process of improvement and perfection on Trade Facilitation and presents her advice on how China can better apply to the improving Trade Facilitation regulations.This article has over 3, 6000 Chinese characters and consists of four parts except the foreword as the followings:The first part is "the topic of Trade Facilitation under WTO". The author first narrates the background of how the topic was brought forward—it was put forward at the economic globalization and post-tariff era. Then the author ponders on the definition of Trade Facilitation, bringing forward her standpoints on the definition of Trade Facilitation after comparison between how the major international organizations defined it. Following it, the definition of Trade Facilitation is analyzed in depth of which the author thinks mainly consists of three factors—technology coordination, legal coordination and special and differential treatment. Finally, meanings of Trade Facilitation towards the governments, the businessmen, the consumers are analyzed. Trade Facilitation can reduce the administrative cost of governments, improve the investment environment, attract foreign investment, lower trade cost, evade all kinds of risks, creating more business opportunities and the consumers may enjoy cheaper goods.The second part is "the Existing Trade Facilitation Regulations". The author first gathers up the existing Trade Facilitation Regulations and then particularly introduces article 5, 8 and 10 in GATT 1994. After that the author focuses on analyzing the flaws and defects in the existing Trade Facilitation Regulations of improvement and brings forward her suggestions on how to improve and perfect the current Trade Facilitation regulations.The third part is "Trade Facilitation Negotiations under WTO". The author first looks back to the history of negotiation on Trade Facilitation, introducing the negotiation process from the Singapore Ministerial Conference in 1996 to General Council meetings in 2004. Then, the current situation is stated that negotiations on Trade Facilitation being part of "the July Package" came to a pause under the influence by hindering factors in Doha Round. But the author is pretty optimistic towards the foreground of negotiations on Trade Facilitation. On the one hand, the topic is according with the interest of all parties, and on the other hand, WTO is the best platform formulating bilateral trade regulations, which was analyzed by the author in particular.The fourth part is "WTO Trade Facilitation Regulations and China". Research on theories aims to better direct practice, so is the aim of research in Trade Facilitation Regulation to direct China's practice in this area. As a huge country in foreign trade, Trade Facilitation brings China not only opportunities but also challenges. China should take active part in the WTO Trade Facilitation negotiations. Facilitated trade can promote foreign trade, industrial adjustment, and reforms in customs policies and make great impact on unreasonable regulating system. But at the same time, it means great challenges for trade policies, regulations and the governments and customs to be modernized, to put more funds, equipment in the infrastructure. China has many problems in applying the Trade Facilitation regulations such as lack of understanding of Trade Facilitation, laws and statutes being opaque and imperfect, lack of coordination between responsible organizations and being short of techniques, talents and funs in capacity building. At the end of this paper the author brings forwards her countermeasures to these problems.