CROWD ELEVATOR

Tariff Classification is one of the main areas of Customs Law and is crucial when imposing customs duties. Specific rules on classification can be found in HS Convention to which almost all the WTO Members (except Taipei) are party. HS consists of over 5000 commodity groups with a six-digit code. HS consists of:  (1) Chapter, Heading and Sub-heading Notes; and  (2) General Rules for the Interpretation (GIR) of the Harmonized System.  The first one which is Chapter, Heading and Subheading Notes is the main step to identify the product classification.  The second part, GIR provide certain principles to classify goods:  (i) incomplete or unfinished goods if they don’t have a proper line are classified as finished goods; (ii) when goods are prima facie classifiable under two or more headings, classification shall be effected as follows. (a) A heading that provides a more specific description is to preferred to the more general description; (b) mixtures, c...

Trade facilitation (TF)* deals with issues such as border infrastructure, customs procedures, non-tariff measures and other. In particular, the shipment process faces four types of procedures: commercial, transport, regulatory and financial. Each process can in turn increase the overall trade cost as it is delayed due to complicated non-transparent and sometimes costly procedures. Even worse is when such delays on every step happen chronically. This increases the costs so much that the firms become less competitive and may decide to slow down the trade flows. How does trade facilitation work in practice? Well, long delays at the border cause extra costs for the business in terms of losing a customer for future orders. The products might not arrive on time and the customer might not need it anymore or will reduce the price for the goods. If the goods being shipped are agricultural and/or perishable, they simply might not stay as fresh as they are and their value in terms of price pa...

Today I will start a series of articles about the World Trade Organization (WTO) based on my notes. I hope this will shed some light to those readers who know little about this particular organization and the world trade as a whole. The history of WTO starts after the World War II when along with other organizations, such as International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), International Trade Organization was about to be created, but instead a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was signed. So, GATT was signed by 23 nations in Geneva in 1947 and came in force on 1 January 1948. GATT was a de facto International Organization. WTO came into force on 1 January 1995. The WTO Secretariat is in Geneva, Switzerland and is headed by Director General. In total GATT/WTO held 9 negotiation rounds from 1947 to 1994. The main objective of negotiation rounds is to decrease trade barriers among the WTO Members. In chronological order those rounds are: 1) Geneva - April 1947 ...