Market access

In international trade, market access refers to a company's ability to enter a foreign market by selling its goods and services in another country. Market access is not the same as free trade, because market access is normally subject to conditions or requirements (such as tariffs or quotas), whereas under ideal free trade conditions goods and services can circulate across borders without any barriers to trade. Expanding market access is therefore often a more achievable goal of trade negotiations than achieving free trade.

Market access concessions and limitations to market access differ greatly between trade in goods and trade in services. While market access for goods mainly involves measures at the border such as customs duties or quantitative restrictions, market access for services relates more to the application of domestic regulation behind the border. Moreover, in a world of proliferating regionalism, preferential market access for goods and services also have distinctive characteristics from non-preferential market access within the multilateral trading system.

Market access for goods imported into the market of a WTO Member may be impeded or restricted in various ways. The most common barriers to market access are customs duties, quantitative restrictions, technical requirements, lack of transparency of national trade regulation, unfair application of customs formalities and procedures. Considering their diversity, there must be different rules to regulate these tariff and non-tariff barriers to market access.

WTO law provides three main groups of rules on market access: rules governing customs duties (tariffs), rules governing quantitative restrictions (quotas), and rules governing other non-tariff barriers such as technical regulations and standards, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, customs formalities and government procurement practices. In addition, rules concerning transparency and “justiciability” are also included to ensure effective market access.

Customs duties

The imposition of customs duties on imported goods is not prohibited under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), but the later encourages WTO Members to gradually reduce customs duties for mutual benefit. Prior to a country's accession to the WTO, it must negotiate with existing Members on tariff bindings, which will be listed later in its Schedule of Concessions. According to Article II:1 of the GATT, whenever a tariff binding exists for a certain product, the customs duties applied to such product must not exceed the level at which they were bound.

Quantitative restrictions

While customs duties are in principle not prohibited as long as they do not exceed the bound rates, quantitative restrictions on trade in goods are generally forbidden. According to Article XI:1 of the GATT, unless there is an exception, WTO Members are not allowed to ban the importation or exportation of goods or to subject them to quotas.