Guide to Non-Preferential Rules of Origin: Deciding Duty Rates, Restrictions & Quotas

What is Origin exactly?

In international commerce, the provenance of the product is largely unrelated to the country of dispatch or, in certain cases, even the country of production. Since it attests to the product’s origin and acts as the basis for determining whether to apply taxes and other trade restrictions, a certificate of origin is often required for international business transactions.

As a consequence, rather than identifying the geographic nationality of a particular item, the rules of origin serve primarily to establish its economic nationality.

The mere free circulation of a product, for instance, inside a Customs Union, does, however, not indicate “Origin”. In practice, that means that the mere fact that Chinese goods were imported into Japan, subjected to tariffs there, and then exported once again does not mean that they are now of Japanese origin.

Source Customs Manager

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