A component of the balance of payments.  The balance of trade is the difference (surplus or deficit) between payments made for a country's merchandise imports and payments received for its exports over a given period of time.  A balance of trade surplus results if exports exceed imports.    

Contract by which an exporter accepts goods or services from the importer as payment for its exported products. 

The time period, rather like a snapshot, agreed during the Uruguay Round agricultural negotiations as the basis on which all reductions and commitments were to be made. For market access and domestic support commitments, the base period was 1986-88. For export subsidy commitments, it was 1986-90.

Source: Walter Goode: Dictionary of Trade Policy Terms, Fourth Edition, (Cambridge University Press/WTO, 2003), p.40

Defined in the WTO Agreement on Agriculture as “the product as close as practicable to the first sale”. This definition leaves room for dispute. If one were to follow it strictly, cheese made on the farm would be a basic agricultural product, but if it was made in an industrial dairy it would be a processed product.

Source: Walter Goode: Dictionary of Trade Policy Terms, Fourth Edition, (Cambridge University Press/WTO, 2003), p. 40

A tariff quota covering a range of closely related internationally traded products. If a tariff quota is applied at the four-digit level under the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (HS), it is still possible to give additional protection to sensitive products by splitting the four-digit level into six digits or more. Quota rights can then be allocated selectively within the entire four-digit range. In this way, a tariff quota can be used as a protectionist measure even when it is allocated fully to importers.

Source: Walter Goode: Dictionary of Trade Policy Terms, Fourth Edition, (Cambridge University Press/WTO, 2003), p.40

See AD VALOREM EQUIVALENT (AVE)

Two participants involved in consultations or negotiations between each other, as opposed to plurilateral consultations (a group of several participants) or multilateral consultations (many participants).

Limits on the value or quantity of a good which can be imported from or exported to a given partner or group of partners.

A formal or informal agreement involving commerce between two countries.   

Source: http://www.asycuda.org/cuglossa.asp?firstlet=B&submit1=Browse

GATT Article II provides that signatories may "bind" tariff duties by including them in their Schedules of tariff concessions, annexed to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Once a duty is bound, it may not be raised above that bound level without compensating affected parties. If the MFN applied duty is lower than the bound duty, the bound level of the duty is called a "ceiling" binding (see Ceiling Binding). If the binding does not cover all products in the tariff line the binding is "partial" and is usually identified by "ex" in the Schedules of tariff concessions.

In the IDB, bindings are recorded in the Textual Tariff (TT) file in the binding code / binding coverage (for partial binding) fields as follows:

B = fully bound,

BX = partially bound,

C= fully bound at ceiling level,

CX = partially bound at ceiling level,

D = Bound at different levels (mixture of fully bound items and items bound at ceiling levels),

DX = Partially bound at different levels (mixture of fully bound items and/or items bound at ceiling levels and unbound items),

U = unbound.

 

These consist in the main of tariffs and nontariff measures, including import quotas. Some add exchange rates to this category, but these are not usually the responsibility of trade ministries.

Source: Walter Goode: Dictionary of Trade Policy Terms, Fourth Edition, (Cambridge University Press/WTO, 2003), p.34

Any measure which acts to restrain imports at point of entry.

In agriculture, a category of domestic support. Green box: supports considered not to distort trade and therefore permitted with no limits. Blue box: permitted supports linked to production, but subject to production limits, and therefore minimally trade-distorting. Amber box: supports considered to distort trade and therefore subject to reduction commitments.