In the simplest meaning, rules of origin can be understood as a regime to identify the originating country of a product. This verification is very important in many aspects. Even though the main function that it serves is to support the custom determination, the effects of such a regime is much more important than that. Rules of origin, even for preferential or non-preferential purpose, is really an essential issue that affects the world economy as a whole, with strong interaction with trade and investment, especially the development of developing and least-developed countries. If there is no transparent regime, it can be utilized as a mean of trade battle. Despite such importance, so far, there is no harmonized regime to unify the procedure. This procrastination results in the difficulties for global trading enterprises to comply with custom procedure and for the countries to benefit from the preferential treatments. Furthermore, it pushes WTO to the risk of being a nominal and ineffective system in practice.
However, one should be noticed that a complete harmonization is not easy to create. The difference in vision and background of each nation requires a great effort with long-term negotiation and concession. Moreover, the new trends emerging in the global trade community bring the doubt about the necessity of establishing a harmonized scheme. Regarding the non-preferential rules of origin, according to the 2017 Report of the Committee on Rules of Origin to the Council for Trade in Goods, members hold different views on whether they should finalize the Harmonization Working Program or not. On the other hand, the system of preferential rules is just in its infant period, with the beginning of negotiations on the application of such rules for developing and least developed countries.
Under such circumstances, this dissertation aims at establishing an overview analysis on the legal basic to support the opinion that the continuance of building a system is not just necessary, but also compulsory. Nonetheless, the dissertation provides the discussion on rules of origin applied in preferential treatment, because the non-preferential treatment needs a very elaborated research on other non-legal issues, means technical and politics. Its second goal is to prove the benefits that a harmonized rules of origin may bring about, and the role that WTO, as the biggest international trade organization, should play in this construction. Thirdly, this dissertation will include some potential approaches to deal with the problems.