20 Years After Marrakesh: Reconsidering the Effects of Preferential Rules of Origin and Anti-Circumvention Rules on Trade in Inputs and Global Production Networks

In a world of increasing globalisation and liberalisation, production and value chains become global with inputs sourced from all over the world and production processes being scattered across countries. This tendency renders more difficult the definition of origin of a good. However, being trade liberalisation still far from non-discriminatory, the concept of origin becomes cardinal for the granting of benefits, as well as for sanctioning unfair trade practices. Globalisation has therefore brought forward a multiplication of varieties of domestic contents regulations imposed by States or groups of States (in bilateral or regional regimes) in order to discriminate between the goods receiving benefits and those whose exports are subject to trade remedies. We are going to consider here two regimes that involve, inter alia, the use of domestic content rules, preferential trade regimes and their preferential rules of origin regimes, and anti-dumping circumvention rules. Very few authors (if none) have treated jointly the question of WTO regulation of preferential rules of origin and anti-circumvention rules. However, both regulations, albeit being different and occurring in different contexts, have similarities in their objectives and in the challenges they create to the WTO legal system. Through the analysis of preferential rules of origin and anti-dumping circumvention measures, the article’s main objective is also to have a broader reflection on the concept of circumvention at large and its discipline within the WTO system.