Financial
Financial
*Brazil economic data
Financial
*China economic data
Financial
*Germany economic data
Financial
*European Union economic data
Financial
*France economic data
Financial
*India economic data
Financial
*Indonesia economic data
Financial
*Italy economic data
Financial
*Japan economic data
Financial
*Canada economic data
Financial
*United States economic data
Financial
*Russia economic data
Financial
*United Kingdom economic data
Bound tariffs are specific commitments made by individual WTO member governments. The bound tariff is the maximum MFN tariff level for a given commodity line. When countries join the WTO or when WTO members negotiate tariff levels with each other during trade rounds, they make agreements about bound tariff rates, rather than actually applied rates.
Bound tariffs are not necessarily the rate that a WTO member applies in practice to other WTO members' products. Members have the flexibility increase or decrease their tariffs (on a non-discriminatory basis) so long as they didn't raise them above their bound levels. If one WTO member raises applied tariffs above their bound level, other WTO members can take the country to dispute settlement. If the country did not reduced applied tariffs below their bound levels, other countries could request compensation in the form of higher tariffs of their own. In other words, the applied tariff is less than or equal to the bound tariff in practice for any particular product.
The gap between the bound and applied MFN rates is called the binding overhang. Trade economists argue that a large binding overhang makes a country's trade policies less predictable. This gap tends to be small on average in industrial countries and often fairly large in developing countries.