GATT — General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which has been superseded as an international organization by the WTO. An updated General Agreement is now one of the WTO’s agreements. 

GATT 1947 — The old (pre-1994) version of the GATT.

GATT 1994 — The new version of the General Agreement, incorporated into the WTO, which governs trade in goods.

Members — WTO governments (first letter capitalized, in WTO style).

MFN — Most-favoured-nation treatment (GATT Article I, GATS Article II and TRIPS Article 4), the principle of not discriminating between one’s trading partners.national treatment — The principle of giving others the same treatment as one’s own nationals.  GATT Article III requires that imports be treated no less favourably than the same or similar domestically-produced goods once they have passed customs. GATS Article XVII and TRIPS Article 3 also deal with national treatment for services and intellectual property protection.

TPRB, TPRM — The Trade Policy Review Body is General Council operating under special procedures for meetings to review trade policies and practices of individual WTO members under the Trade  

Policy Review Mechanism.

transparency — Degree to which trade policies and practices, and the process by which they are established, are open and predictable.

Uruguay Round — Multilateral trade negotiations launched at Punta del Este, Uruguay in September 1986 and concluded in Geneva in December 1993. Signed by Ministers in Marrakesh, Morocco, in April 1994.

 

Tariffs 

binding, bound — see “tariff binding”

electronic commerce — The production, advertising, sale and distribution of products via  telecommunications networks.

free-rider — A casual term used to infer that a country which does not make any trade concessions, profits, nonetheless, from tariff cuts and concessions made by other countries in negotiations under the most-favoured-nation principle.

Harmonized System — An international nomenclature developed by the World Customs Organization, which is arranged in six digit codes allowing all participating countries to classify traded goods on a common basis. Beyond the six digit level, countries are free to introduce national distinctions for tariffs and many other purposes.

ITA — Information Technology Agreement, or formally the Ministerial-Declaration on Trade in Information Technology Products, under which  participants will remove tariffs on IT products by the year 2000.

ITA II — Negotiations aimed at expanding ITA’s product coverage.

nuisance tariff — Tariff so low that it costs the government more to collect it than the revenue it generates.

schedule of concessions — List of bound tariff rates.

tariff binding — Commitment not to increase a rate of duty beyond an agreed level. Once a rate of duty is bound, it may not be raised without compensating the affected parties.

tariff escalation — Higher import duties on semi-processed products than on raw materials, and higher still on finished products. This practice protects domestic processing industries and discourages the development of processing activity in the countries where raw materials originate.

tariff peaks — Relatively high tariffs, usually on “sensitive” products, amidst generally low tariff levels. For industrialized countries, tariffs of 15% and above are generally recognized as “tariff peaks”.

tariffs — Customs duties on merchandise imports. Levied either on an ad valorem basis (percentage of value) or on a specific basis (e.g. $7 per 100 kgs.). Tariffs give price advantage to similar locally-produced goods and raise revenues for the government.

WCO — World Customs Organization, a multilateral body located in Brussels through which participating countries seek to simplify and rationalize customs procedures.

 

Non-tariff measures 

anti-dumping duties — Article VI of the GATT 1994 permits the imposition of anti-dumping duties against dumped goods, equal to the difference between their export price and their normal value, if dumping causes injury to producers of competing products in the importing country.

circumvention — Measures taken by exporters to evade anti-dumping or countervailing duties.