Sanitary and Phytosanitary regulations - government standards to protect human, animal and plant life and health, to help ensure that food is safe for consumption.

Refer to the Agriculture - Standards and Safety  on the WTO website for more information.

In general, a WTO member's list of commitments on market access (bound tariff rates, access to services markets). Goods schedules can include commitments on agricultural subsidies and domestic support. Services commitments include bindings on national treatment.

All concessions negotiated in GATT/WTO negotiations are reported in the legal instruments containing Schedules of concessions. Each WTO Member incorporates its concessions in its own schedule.

Related terms: 

LOOSE-LEAF SCHEDULE - After the Tokyo Round, GATT Contracting Parties decided that consolidated schedules containing all concessions granted by a particular country (or group of countries) since GATT was created should be established. The schedules are issued in a loose leaf format to simplify the replacement of pages where the tariff numbering or a concession is amended. National consolidated schedules of concessions are referred to as "loose leaf schedules".  After the Uruguay Round, WTO Members decided to establish the Consolidated Loose-leaf Schedules on Goods (See G/L/138).

COLUMNS OF THE LOOSE-LEAF SCHEDULES - Tariff concessions offered by each WTO Member are reported in the loose leaf schedules in columns 3 to 8. The level or rate of a concession is reported in column 3. The WTO legal instrument containing the present concession is reported in column 4. INRs on the current bound rate are reported in column 5. The WTO legal instrument containing the first concession offered on the tariff item is reported in column 6 and historical INRs are reported in column 7. Other duties and charges (ODCs), if not notified in a headnote, are indicated in column 8.  The section relative to agricultural tariff concessions contains an additional column to indicate the use or not of the special safeguard provision of Article 5 of the Agreement on Agriculture.

A tariff rate related to the seasonal supply of domestic agricultural products. Tariffs are low when domestic offerings are out of season and high when domestic production starts to reach the market. The imported product need not be the same as the domestic product.

Source: Walter Goode: Dictionary of Trade Policy Terms, Fourth Edition, (Cambridge University Press/WTO, 2003), p.303

See Harmonized System (HS).

See CATEGORY (product).

Products that might undergo further processing before they are sold to consumers. Semi-manufactures form the second stage of processing in the analysis of the tariff escalation. See  ESCALATION (TARIFF).

Domestically produced goods considered economically and politically important in a country whose competitive position would be threatened if protection against the imports of similar goods were reduced. The steel and textiles industries in many developed countries, for example, employ large numbers of workers, often in communities that cannot in the short term offer alternative employment. For these reasons, there has been strong opposition to the reduction of tariff and other trade-restricting measures affecting sensitive products.  

Source: http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/trade/glosssz.htm#s

Under the WTO rules, any territory with a tariff or other regulations of commerce of its own which governs its trade with other territories. A customs territory need not be a sovereign state.

Source: Walter Goode: Dictionary of Trade Policy Terms, Fourth Edition, (Cambridge University Press/WTO, 2003), p.90

See also CUSTOMS UNION.

Small economies face specific challenges in their participation in world trade, for example lack of economy of scale or limited natural resources. The Doha Declaration mandates the General Council to examine these problems and to make recommendations to the next Ministerial Conference as to what trade-related measures could improve the integration of small economies.

'Special and differential treatment' provisions for developing countries. Contained in several WTO agreements.

A mechanism available under Article 5 of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture to Members who have converted non-tariff measures to tariff protection. It allows Members to impose additional duties on agricultural products if import volumes exceed defined trigger levels or import prices fall below defined trigger prices. Special safeguards therefore provide a safety net for importing countries that are also producers in the event of a surge in imports. They are meant to be introduced in a transparent manner.

Derived from: Walter Goode: Dictionary of Trade Policy Terms, Fourth Edition, (Cambridge University Press/WTO, 2003), p.323-324

See DUTY.

For the analysis of tariff escalation, products are classified according to their stage of processing. Products can be classified, in general, according to three stages of processing.

During the Uruguay Round, in the review and assessment of offers, the Secretariat classified products according to three stages of processing, which were defined at the level of HS 6-digit subheadings:

 

Stage of processing	Agricultural Products	Non-agricultural products
1	Primary products	Raw materials
2	Semi-processed products	Semi-finished manufactures
3	Processed products	Finished manufactures

See also ESCALATION (TARIFF).

Concessions offered in GATT negotiations were sometimes staged over a period of several years before the concession was fully implemented. For example, a duty reduction of 10 percentage points could have been offered over 5 years with 5 equal stages of 2 points every year. The Marrakech Protocol annexed to the GATT 1994 established that the Uruguay Round reductions were to be applied in equal stages, unless otherwise indicated in the Member's schedule.

The standard deviation of duty rates within a customs tariff is the average deviation of all duty rates from the overall arithmetic tariff average. The standard deviation is a measure of the dispersion of duties around the average. The example below illustrates how the standard deviation is calculated for a group of tariff lines for which the simple average is 20 per cent.

Tariff line number	Duty rate	Deviation from  the average (20%)	Square deviation
0101.11.10	50%	+30	(30*30) = 900
0101.11.90	10%	-10	(-10*-10) = 100
0101.19.10	0%	-20	(-20*-20) = 400
0101.19.90	20%	0	(0*0) = 0
TOTAL	80%		1400

ARITHMETIC AVERAGE = Sum of duties/Number of duties = 80/4 = 20%

VARIANCE = Sum of square deviations/Number of duties = 1400/4 = 350

STANDARD DEVIATION = Square root of the variance = 18.7%

The SITC is a classification developed by the United Nations for statistical analysis of trade data. In the SITC, articles are grouped by classes of goods such as food, raw materials, chemicals, machinery and transport equipment and also by stage of fabrication and by industrial origin. The SITC was first revised in 1960 (Revision 1) to match the Customs Co operation Council nomenclature (CCCN). A second revision was established to match the revised version of the CCCN, in 1972. The third revision was established in 1985 to match the HS.

Standard WTO codes are used in the IDB data base for recording countries, quantity units, etc. All national codes are converted to "standard WTO codes" in the PC IDB. (see COMMON SYSTEM OF CODING).

Technical specifications that lay down characteristics of a product such as size, quality, performance, or safety. Standards may also cover terminology, testing methods, packaging, labeling, or marking requirements. The Tokyo Round Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade — usually known as the "Standards Code" — seeks to ensure that national standards are not used to impede trade.  

Source: http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/trade/glosssz.htm#s

See Harmonized System (HS).

The information to be included in the IDB is communicated by reporting countries on computer readable media. All data submitted on computer readable media are referred to as a "national submission". See also GUIDELINES FOR SUPPLYING IDB SUBMISSIONS.

Any form of income or price support granted by a country, which serves to increase exports of any product from or reduce imports of any product into its territory.

There is no official definition of a substantial supplier.  However in GATT practice, a country that had a share of at least 10 per cent in total imports of an item on a given market was considered as a substantial supplier.

When an exporting country transfers part of a quota from one product to another restrained product.

A compromise formula for achieving non-linear tariff cuts proposed by Switzerland during the Tokyo Round. It was intended to reduce higher tariffs by greater proportion than lower tariffs. The formula reads: Z=AX/A+X.  The initial tariff rate is represented by X, and A is a coefficient to be agreed on. Z is the resulting lower tariff rate. The European Economic Community, the Nordic countries and Australia used the coefficient 16, the United States, Japan and Switzerland 14. New Zealand used the item-by-item technique.

Derived from: Walter Goode: Dictionary of Trade Policy Terms, Fourth Edition, (Cambridge University Press/WTO, 2003), p.336

The system of trade used to record customs import values falls into two categories: special system of trade and general system of trade. The general system of trade includes imports of goods into customs warehouses and commercial free zones, which may not be included in the special system of trade. A table showing a comparison of the import flows in these two systems is reproduced below:

Source: United Nations International Merchandise Trade Statistics; Concepts and Definitions, Table 1 (ST/RSA/STAT/SER.M/52/Rev.2)

	FOREIGN GOOD	GENERAL TRADE	SPECIAL TRADE
	from the rest of the world or from customs transit:
1	into free circulation area, premises for inward processing and into industrial free zones	Imports	Imports
2	into premises for customs warehousing and commercial free zones	Imports
	from premises for customs warehousing and commercial free zones:
3	into free circulation area, premises for inward processing or into industrial free zones		Imports
	COMPENSATING PRODUCTS AFTER OUTWARD PROCESSING
	from the rest of the world or from customs transit:
4	into free circulation area, premises for inward processing and into industrial free zones	Imports	Imports
5	into premises for customs warehousing and commercial free zones	Imports
	From premises for customs warehousing and commercial free zones:
6	into free circulation area, premises for inward processing and into industrial free zones		Imports
	DOMESTIC GOODS IN THE SAME STATE AS EXPORTED
	From the rest of the world or from customs transit:
7	into free circulation area, premises for inward processing and into industrial free zones	Re-imports	Re-imports
8	into premises for customs warehousing and commercial free zones	Re-imports
	From premises for customs warehousing and commercial free zones:
9	into free circulation area, premises for inward processing and into industrial free zones		Re-imports