Rules of origin (RoO) is one of the most discussed yet one of the most poorly understood trade disciplines. There are non-preferential and preferential RoO. Non-preferential rules are used to distinguish foreign from domestic products in establishing antidumping and countervailing duties, safeguard measures, origin-marking requirements, or discriminatory quantitative restrictions or tariff quotas, as well as in the context of government procurement.

Preferential RoO, meanwhile, are used in unilateral preferential programs such as the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) as well as in reciprocal free trade agreements (FTAs). Here, RoO define the processes to be performed and/or inputs to be incorporated into a final product within a particular preferential area in order for the exported product to qualify for preferential tariff treatment. The purpose of preferential RoO is to curb trade deflection – to avoid the transshipment of products from non-FTA members through a low-tariff FTA partner to a high-tariff one and, as such, to preclude outsiders from free-riding on the preferential market access granted to agreement insiders.Footnote ¹

Preferential RoO are highly consequential to market access; remaining in place even after preferential tariffs have been phased out, RoO are potentially the main agent of discrimination embedded in FTAs. They have recently received substantial analytical attention by economists, lawyers, and political scientists alike.Footnote ² However, non-preferential RoO as well as RoO in unilateral preferential schemes have been less well analyzed; the few existing studies are dispersed across various institutions and journals. Furthermore, only a few studies of preferential RoO discuss their non-preferential cousins.

Stefano Inama, a senior trade expert at the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva, seeks to rectify this gap. A long-standing RoO observer and advocate for revising RoO in the European Union's unilateral preferential programs, in particular, Inama has written a 600-page volume Rules of Origin in International Trade that could perhaps be best characterized as a RoO encyclopedia.

The book covers plenty of ground in its six chapters – on early attempts to establish non-preferential RoO multilaterally, the 1994 Uruguay Round Agreement on non-preferential RoO, preferential RoO, as well as on economics, design, and administration of RoO. The geographic scope of the volume is as broad as its substance; Inama takes us from Geneva through Africa, Europe, the Americas as well as Asia.

The book is descriptive rather than analytical. The various chapters catalogue much more than they explain, mainly reviewing distinct product-specific rules (the requirements set for any one product) and what might be called ‘regime-wide’ rules (rules that pertain similarly to all products, such as on the level of de minimis or the calculation method for regional value content) in various multilateral and preferential agreements. Inama also compiles some of the main studies as well as official documents on RoO produced in recent years.

To be sure, the volume does have two components that are somewhat more analytical. The first is an assessment of the economics of RoO and, in particular, developing countries' utilization of preferential programs. A number of studies as well as Inama's own work at UNCTAD have shown that complex and restrictive RoO often undermine utilization of trade preferences. In his book, Inama lays out the key points of this debate, illustrating them with preference utilization data from various less developed countries. The second more analytical component is on lessons learned from designing RoO in various agreements – from negotiating RoO in various sectors, such as metal products or textiles, and crafting particular types of RoO, such as variants of the change in tariff classification rule or of regional value content rule.

Inama's is a highly detailed and technical work, rather than a parsimonious and broad one that would relate RoO to the other major developments in global trade policy. It covers the intricacies of various types of RoO, often pulling extensive sections from the actual RoO chapters and annexes in various trade agreements. Yet, this helps illustrate the various issues with practical examples – the most meaningful and, in fact, necessary methodology when explaining RoO to their to-be users. Besides, by now, a number of studies and volumes have taken such a more analytical, big-picture approach to RoO and other trade disciplines.Footnote ³

Overall, Inama attains remarkable breadth – and fills a gap that the more analytical studies have covered only in part. And albeit dealing with an inherently technical subject matter, Inama's volume is written in an accessible, clear manner that even a layperson can grasp. This is no small feat in the RoO world in particular, or in the stream of analyses on trade policy disciplines in general.

Its descriptive, encyclopedic nature makes the volume useful for three audiences. The first is trade negotiators and trade lawyers around the world. This at its core is a RoO handbook for negotiators tasked to negotiate RoO for the first time, and for seasoned officials aiming to get at the best RoO practices. It is also a useful catalogue for officials currently working to ‘converge’ RoO across the dozens of bilateral FTAs in such regions as the Pacific side of Latin America and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) zone. While not immediately comparative across agreements as a number of other empirical studies are, this book lays out RoO in a detailed and practical manner that is well-suited for negotiation tables.

The second potential audience of the volume might be export/import operators and supply chain analysts. Arbitrating the market access of goods in the global economy, RoO are deemed to reverberate to firms' export, outsourcing, and investment decisions around the world; this volume can serve as a guide for strategy sessions in firms seeking to operate better across borders.

The third audience for this volume is academics aiming to pursue research on this thorny trade policy instrument. A ‘RoO 101’ tutorial, this volume is a starting point for students of the intricacies of the rules governing global commerce. Indeed, the dearth of empirical analyses on RoO only some five years ago owes to a good extent to researchers' being daunted by this often indecipherable instrument and the detailed, 200-page long RoO annexes in FTAs. Indeed, RoO are not nearly as immediately quantifiable and comparable across products as tariffs are, and as such they are in many ways also much more diverse and difficult to operationalize in research than tariffs or even non-tariff measures. Yet, RoO provide an interesting and crucial window into understanding the political economy and economic effects of trade policy.Footnote ⁴ Inama's volume is a reference to analysts striving to understand RoO's variation – across products, agreements, and countries – and to study their political economy determinants and trade effects.

Overall, Inama's volume is a welcome addition to the toolkit of trade negotiators and practitioners, and a useful item in libraries of trade rule handbooks. There are perhaps two items that would have enriched the volume further. The first is a chapter of lessons learned on, and a roadmap or a toolkit for, training developing country officials and private sector representatives to negotiate and apply RoO. This, after all, is what Inama has done during his career, and an area where he could offer lessons, including for consultants and development agencies training developing country negotiators and companies. The second area that remains wanting is a succinct closing chapter that would summarize the main issues and potential policy proposals arising from Inama's extensive study. These two items would make for excellent journal articles.