If you thought you needed to fork out money for world-class international tariff profiles, you might be in for a pleasant surprise. The World Trade Organisation (WTO), the International Trade Centre (ITC) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) recently released, without much media coverage, their joint publication, ‘World Tariff Profiles 2022’. You merely need an Internet connection to access it.
The publication is devoted to market access for goods, but individual country tariff profiles can be separately downloaded from the WTO website. It contains a compilation of the main tariff parameters for each of the 164 WTO members, as well as other countries and customs territories, where the data is available.
The ‘World Tariff Profiles 2022’ is divided into five parts: ‘Summary Tables’, ‘Country/Territory Tariff Profiles’, ‘Non-Tariff Barriers’ (NTBs), ‘Special Topics’, and ‘Annexes’.
The ‘Summary Tables’ consists of two parts – Tariff and Trade. The Tariff subheadings are the Description of Column Headings, Technical Notes, All Products, Agricultural Products, and Non-Agricultural Products. The Trade subheadings are the Description of Column Headings, Technical Notes, and Imports and Exports Profile.
The ‘Country/Territory Tariff Profiles’ portion consists of an Index of Tariff Profiles, Technical Notes and Country/Territory Tariff Profiles.
The part on NTBs consists of an Introduction and Statistics on Some Selected NTBs, which is further divided into Anti-Dumping, Countervailing Measures, and Safeguards. You will, of course, know these three as trade remedies; the first two are categorised as unfair trade remedies, and the last as a fair-trade remedy.
‘Special Topics’ consists of two parts, Preferential Rules of Origin (RoO) in International Trade, and Non-Tariff Measures (NTMs) on ‘Green’ and ‘Brown’ Energy Products. Although NTBs and NTMs tend to be used interchangeably by the uninformed, NTBs are essentially subsets of NTMs and are measures with potentially trade-inhibiting effects. The Preferential RoO in International Trade consists of an Introduction, a New Comprehensive Database of RoO, Preferential Origin Criteria, Origin and Certification Provisions, Conclusions, and an Annex. The NTMs on ‘Green’ and ‘Brown’ Energy Products, on the other hand, consists of an Introduction, Use of NTMs in ‘Green’ and ‘Brown’ Energy Products, Results and Policy Conclusions, References, and an Annex.
‘Annexes’ consists of two parts: Data Sources, and Frequently Asked Questions.
The publication’s introduction states: “Each profile presents information on tariffs imposed by each economy on its imports, complemented with an analysis of the market access conditions it faces in its major export markets. Statistics for all countries and territories are given in standardised tables which allow easy comparisons between countries/territories, between sectors and, specifically for WTO members, between bound and applied tariffs as well. The calculations are based on national tariff schedules and imports, in conformity with a standard Harmonised System nomenclature version. To the extent possible, ad valorem equivalents of non-ad valorem tariffs are estimated and are included in the estimation of tariff indicators. Nonetheless, certain caveats apply in the interpretation of these indicators and the reader is advised to read the methodological notes that precede the statistical tables.”
Should you need reminding, the WTO is the only international organisation dealing with rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by most of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their Parliaments. The ITC facilitates small-business export success in developing countries by providing inclusive trade development solutions to the private sector, trade- support bodies and policymakers.