International Trade: Rules of Origin

Determining the country of origin of a product is important for properly assessing tariffs, enforcing trade remedies such as antidumping and countervailing duties or quantitative restrictions tariff quotas, and statistical purposes. Other commercial trade policies are also linked with origin determinations, such as country of origin labeling and government procurement regulations. Rules of origin ROO can be very simple, noncontroversial tools of international trade as long as all of the parts of a product are manufactured and assembled primarily in one country. However, when a finished products component parts originate in many countries-as is often the case in todays global trading environment-determining origin can be a very complex, sometimes subjective, and time-consuming process.