| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 法學院碩士在職專班 === 103 === Most countries are gradually reducing tariff rate on imported goods as the result of global trade liberalization. However, they take non-tariff measures instead to more or less affect the market access of imported goods. The implementation of these non-tariff measures, including anti-dumping, anti-subsidy, trade restrictions, tariff rate quota, origin labeling, special safeguard, sanity and phytosanitary measure, technical barriers to trade, etc., must base on the country of origin of imported goods. Therefore, the rules of origin will affect the market access, the tariff duty, and origin labeling for imported goods.
With a view to ensuring that rules of origin do not themselves create unnecessary obstacles to trade, international organization has been concerning about the issues. As the results of the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations, the Agreement on Rules of Origin, concluded and encompassed in the annexes of the Agreement on Establishing World Trade Organization, ensures the application of rules of origin in an impartial, transparent, predictable, and consistent manner. The harmonization work program of non-preferential rules of origin has begun since July 1, 1995, and should have completed by July 1998. However, at present it has not been made consensus among WTO members due to the 94 core policy issues, including an implications issue and 93 technical issues.
The implications issue is whether the Harmonized non-preferential rules of origin be applicable to other WTO Agreements, especially for the anti-dumping measures. The issue has different views among WTO members. The anti-dumping measures extend to the trade patterns, which are used to circumvent the anti-dumping duties by exporting individual parts or components of a dumped product to an intermediate third country, and assembling them there, or by exporting individual parts or components of a dumped product to the country which is applying the anti-dumping measure and assembling them there, if the trade patterns meet the conditions for the application of anti-circumvention measures. The anti-circumvention measures are associated with the determination of origin of imported goods, and lead to the huge controversy on implications issue of the harmonized non-preferential rules of origin between the import countries implementing anti-circumvention measures and export-oriented countries countering the measures. In addition, the product specific rule of machinery products is also the huge controversial question, among the 93 technical issues. The United States insist the rule is based on the change of tariff classification, while the European Union prefers the value-added approach to determine the country of origin for machinery products.
The United States and European Union disagree on some issues of the harmonization work program, and they have implemented unilaterally the anti-circumvention as well as many best practices. Therefore, the thesis will study the progress on the harmonization program of non-preferential rules of origin and anti-circumvention provision in WTO, and the regulations and practices related to anti-circumvention measures in the United States and the European Union.
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