Preferential Origin & Duty Advantage Sheet

How to read this sheet

This performs a value content test on the build-down method, where content is the export price less imported material, over the export price. Two consequences follow and both surprise people. Raising the price raises the content and cutting it lowers it, although nothing about the garment has changed, so a discount agreed at the end of a negotiation can disqualify goods that qualified at the start of it - and the duty then payable is charged on the whole order while the discount was only a few per cent of it. And negotiating a lower price from a non-originating supplier improves the content, because it is imported value that the test counts, not imported quantity. Whether a component originates is an input, not a conclusion: it is settled by the agreement's process rule for that heading, by a tariff shift test, or by a supplier declaration, and where the applicable rule is a process rule such as yarn-forward, the value test on this sheet is not the test that decides the matter. Build-up methods, de minimis allowances for small non-originating shares, accumulation across party countries, and the treatment of freight and packing all vary by agreement and none is modelled here. The cost per point column ranks the re-sourcing options and does not account for lead time, minimum order quantities, or whether the alternative supplier can hold the shade - which in practice decide as many of these questions as price does.