Regulation of Trade in 3D Printed Goods and WTO Modernization: An Opportunity for New Preferential Rules of Origin

Rules of origin are key legal tools for international trade. While they can pose a puzzle for trade analysts and traders to comprehend, they are not just technical elements of trade. It is important to understand how they function as rules can be utilized by states as non-tariff barriers to trade. This dissertation focuses on preferential rules of origin, which determine if a good receives preferential tariff treatment under a regional or bilateral trade agreement. WTO Members must follow the Common Declaration with Regard to Preferential Rules of Origin, an annex to the Agreement on Rules of Origin. This instrument gives Members sovereignty in designing rules. Prior to and since the formation of the WTO, Members have designed rules that traders find restrictive, especially for trade in inputs. As goods are constructed with parts sourced in global value chains, traders must verify the origin of each part to obtain preferential tariff treatment under an agreement. While digital technology facilitates access to information on rules of origin, traders must still understand and comply with national and regional custom procedures. Digital technology also is the basis for advanced manufacturing, which replaces or complements human labor with digitally based manufacturing techniques, such as additive manufacturing (3D printing). Traders looking to 3D printing to shorten global value chains and reshore manufacturing may face challenges when determining the origin of a 3D printed product, as current rules in trade instruments are based on human-labor manufacturing. Trade analysts have begun to explore rules of origin in the context of 3D printing, including whether the 3D file should be an origin-conferring input. This dissertation takes up these initial assessments and examines the potential outcomes of applying current rules to advanced manufactured goods (which are produced in developed and developing countries) or designing new rules. This investigation requires an exploration of the connections between digital trade and customs duties, the role of state sovereignty in a digital trade environment, and the impact of “deep” policy provisions in agreements on trade of advanced products. Using doctrinal, qualitative, and interdisciplinary research, this dissertation presents the rules under WTO law, the main criteria for determining the origin of a good, legal and economic critiques of preferential rules of origin, rules in the context of services and digital trade, the challenges of applying the origin criteria to 3D printed goods, and recommendations for designing rules for advanced manufactured products and for making rules more trader-friendly. Looking at preferential rules of origin in the context of 3D printing allows us to experiment with modernizing rules to support trade in a digital environment. Identifying aspects of the design and administration of rules where there is a risk for protectionist intervention or a risk of generating more confusion for traders leads us to question how the trade law system should regulate such rules. These considerations also tie into some of the challenges international institutions, especially the WTO, face at this moment: what role should multilateralism play in forming a framework for trade and how can organizations modernize along with technological changes.