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Tariffs
Customs duties on merchandise imports are called tariffs. Tariffs give a price advantage to locally-produced goods over similar goods which are imported, and they raise revenues for governments. One result of the Uruguay Round was countries?commitments to cut tariffs and to 揵ind? their customs duty rates to levels which are difficult to raise. The current negotiations under the Doha Agenda continue efforts in that direction in agriculture and non-agricultural market access.
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Introduction
- Information on tariffs
in 揢nderstanding the WTO?/a>
- Information on tariffs and market access for agriculture
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The mandate
- The original mandate: GATT article XXVIII bis (GATT 1947)
- The Doha
mandate: Paras. 16, 50, and 31 (iii)
- Mandate under the July
Package, 1 August 2005. See agricultural market
access in Annex A
and non
agricultural market access in Annex B.
- Schedules of market access
commitments on goods by WTO Members
- There is no legally binding agreement that sets out the targets for tariff reductions. Instead, individual members of the WTO have listed their commitments to cut and bind tariffs on goods schedules that are part of the Uruguay Round Agreements. Additional commitments were made under the 1997 Information Technology Agreement.
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Get Tariff Data
Data on WTO members' tariffs are of two types:
- Bound rates (the ceiling rates as listed in members?搒chedules?or lists of commitments)
- Applied rates (the rates members currently charge, which can be lower than the bound rates).
WTO tariff databases contain both bound and applied rates. Options for accessing and searching the databases can be found here.
See also:
> Goods schedules gateway
> Current situation of goods schedules
> The 揋oods schedules and tariff data?section on each member's page
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Work on tariffs in the WTO
- Negotiations under the Doha Agenda
- Non-agricultural market access (NAMA)
- Agricultural market access and tariff reduction methods
- Committee on Market Access
- Agriculture: notifications on
current tariff quotas
- Committee of Participants on the Expansion of Trade in Information Technology Products
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Disputes
Information on disputes and customs duties and tariffs in the WTO Analytical Index.
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Statistics on tariffs/customs duties
A central and user-friendly data portal to access a wide range of WTO statistical indicators on international trade, tariffs, non-tariff measures and other indicators.
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Links
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World Tariff Profiles
Co-published with Cambridge University Press in 2018.
Download Table of Contents and Foreword
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Tariff Bindings Database: 1996-2011
The Tariff Bindings Database provides estimates of WTO members' tariff binding rates — that is, the maximum upper bound rate at which a WTO member could set a tariff under WTO commitments — from 1996 to 2011. The database covers 143 members and 5,767 products at the HS6 level to allow for comparison across countries.
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