An Analysis on the Agricultural FTA Rules of Origin of Korea and other Major Countries

This paper analyses agricultural rules of origin in Korea's seven FTAs and other eight FTAs of the United States, Japan, China and Europe, seeking several policy implications for the future FTA negotiations and agricultural development. The results of analysis are as follows: (i) the agricultural product-specific rules of origin of Korea's FTAs are more restrictive than those of other countries' FTAs; (ii) the restrictiveness index of basic agricultural products is higher than that of the processed agricultural products; (iii) according to the analysis of the relationship between the restrictiveness index and trade values, the higher the restrictiveness index is, the larger the values of import and export are, with some exceptions; (iv) an analysis of the relative degree of liberalization based on both tariff concession and product-specific rules of origin shows that the Korea-Singapore FTA, Japan-Mexico FTA, EU-Chile FTA are relatively less liberalized, while the China-Chile FTA, China-New Zealand FTA, Korea-ASEAN FTA, US-Australia FTA are relatively more liberalized.