It product trade liberalization is the general trend

It is reported that the World Trade Organisation's Information Technology Agreement (ITA) negotiations have recently stalled. After the WTO reached a trade facilitation agreement last year, the WTO Director-General, Azevedo, is expected to take action on the free trade in high-technology products, but in the end, the negotiators have been unable to reach a consensus in such areas as LCD screens, and tariff concessions for high-technology products will be stranded again.

Free trade is of course the ideal of the WTO, but free trade on the global Industrial competition pattern is also a shuffle, tariffs on a country's infant industry is necessary to protect, therefore, free trade in addition to consider the comparative advantage, but also to take into account the industrial layout and development of the balance.

December 1996, the WTO members and the individual Customs district related parties to achieve the information technology products Tariff Relief Agreement, in 1997 formally implemented. 17 years later, despite many rounds of negotiations, the tariff negotiations on information technology have not been extended, and the agreements of that year are far from suitable for the current situation of free trade development. The annual trade volume of information technology products exceeds 4 trillion, which accounts for one-fifth of the world's goods trade, which shows that the tariff reduction of information technology products is the key breakthrough area for WTO to promote free trade.

Compared with 17 years ago, the world really entered the information age, the content of free trade and the object has undergone a fundamental change, the WTO's "technical content" is also rising, which is inseparable with the progress of the world industrialization and informatization. With the expansion of the trade volume of information technology products, it is a big adjustment of the global industrial structure, and the semiconductor industry has become a high ground for the competition of various technological powers. When an industry has been more mature and more balanced layout, free trade is relatively easy to advance, but in the field of higher technical dividend, the strong countries want to share these dividends, and can occupy the high point of technology, this time, naïve industry protection theory will be more popular. At present, in the field of liquid crystal display, South Korea, China, Taiwan and other land alone, South Korea of course want to gain greater market share through free trade, but for China, the tariff relief means that China's related industries exposed to the firepower of strong external competitors. However, although the theory of industrial protection has its theoretical basis, but in the long run, China's competitive industries in the world are all in the baptism of fierce competition to develop and expand, open is still the general trend.

Although the negotiations did not reach a final agreement, the success of the distance is only a few centimeters. First, the Chinese and American leaders reached an agreement on expanding the technology products trade during the APEC summit, including more than 200 kinds of products, which laid the foundation for the ideal of free trade of technology products under the WTO framework. Second, China and South Korea reached a bilateral agreement in 2006, which stipulated the 10-year transition period of flat panel display to zero tariff, and two years later, China and South Korea will achieve bilateral zero tariff in this area. In other words, at most two years, obstacles to the WTO's expansion of trade in information technology products will no longer exist.

With the development of the global economy, the connotation of free trade is also deepening, not only the technological content of trade products is improving, but free trade has broken through the category of tariffs, such as investment, environmental protection, labor and other factors should be included. Whether from the trend of free trade, or the efforts of technical products to reduce tariffs, the LCD screen will not become a barrier to free trade, but a free trade lens, from which you can see a future that can be expected.