Identification Of "Like Product" In National Treatment

The principle of national treatment requires WTO members not to treat productsor services differently just because of the different origin. Imported products orservices can’t be treated less favorably than their domestic counterparts. GATTArticle III, Sec1,2,4is the soul and main part of national treatment, and what’sstudied here is just the identification of the “like product” in such sections.No matter in the period of GATT or after the establishment of WTO, casesabout national treatment occupied a great proportion in the dispute settlement, inmost of these cases, the identification of like product is a necessary part. If a memberset a threshold to apply internal tax or set conditions for the application of internalregulation, but the threshold and the conditions are not that reasonable, people willthink it’s discrimination between the products. Moreover, because of the applicationof the tax and regulations, if most of the products which get bad results are importedproducts while most of the products which get good results are domestic products,whether the two kinds of products are like products become the key point to decidewhether there is a violation of national treatment.This article has4parts. Part1is the introduction of the problem of “likeproduct”. In this part, literal interpretation, historical interpretation and objectinterpretation are applied to divide like products into narrowly defined like productsand widely defined products, and the relationship among narrowly defined likeproduct, directly competitive and substitutable products and widely defined like products are analyzed. Part2is an important part, it introduces two standards for theidentification of like products in practice, border tax standard and object and effectstandard. Many cases are cited here to introduce their emergence, development, andthe extinction of the object and effect standard. Their advantages and disadvantagesare also evaluated. Part3compares the two standards, it lists the similarities anddifferences of the two standards, followed by the deep reasons of why border taxbeat object and effect. Finally, in Part4we come to the experience and inspirationabout explanation of WTO provisions and concepts we can get from the battlebetween the two standards.