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A pair of countries is rarely connected by exactly one trade regime. The overlays page builds the cross-product view — 273 FTAs × 75 blocs × 148 corridors — and the decision rule for which one governs your consignment.
The previous seven axes of this atlas describe physical and operational connectivity: which goods rails, data rails, energy rails, money rails and paper rails actually carry the consignment from origin to destination. The eighth axis describes the legal-overlay connectivity: which trade regimes apply on top of any given lane, and how those regimes interact when more than one of them is in force at the same time. The honest answer to the popular question which trade agreement covers India and Germany? is that there is more than one agreement in force on that bilateral pair, that they apply to different aspects of the same consignment, and that the practical consequence for the trader is that the right tariff treatment depends on which overlay is correctly invoked at the customs counter — not on a single document marked "trade agreement".
The page below is structured as a guide to thinking about overlays in layers. The bottom layer is always the WTO baseline — the MFN tariff and the broader WTO acquis (TRIPS, GATS, the Agreement on Customs Valuation, the Trade Facilitation Agreement, the SPS Agreement, the TBT Agreement). On top of the WTO baseline sit the autonomous unilateral preference schemes (the EU's GSP, the US's GSP and AGOA, and similar). On top of those sit the bilateral and plurilateral free-trade agreements. On top of those sit the customs unions and broader economic blocs. And on top of those sit the corridor-level operational arrangements, the bilateral investment treaties, and the various sectoral or product-specific protocols. A typical consignment is governed by a stack of three to seven overlapping regimes, and the operational question is which regime applies to which aspect of the consignment.
The WTO baseline applies to all trade between any two of the 164 WTO members, which means it applies to almost every consignment of significance moving through the international economy. The MFN principle obligates each member to grant any other member the most favourable tariff treatment it grants to any third party — except where a specific exception applies, of which the most important are FTAs (under GATT Article XXIV), customs unions (also Article XXIV), and authorised preferential schemes for developing countries (under the Enabling Clause). The MFN principle is therefore the structural bedrock on top of which every preferential overlay is layered.
For a consignment moving between any two WTO members, the WTO baseline determines: the maximum applied tariff (which may be lower than the bound MFN rate but cannot legally be higher than the bound rate); the customs-valuation methodology; the application of SPS and TBT measures; the enforceability of intellectual-property protections; the scope of services market access under GATS; and the trade-facilitation obligations under the TFA. Even when a more specific overlay applies — an FTA, for instance — the WTO baseline determines what would have applied in the absence of the overlay, which is the comparator that decides whether invoking the overlay is commercially worthwhile.
Autonomous unilateral preferences are tariff reductions granted by an importing country to a developing-country exporter without requiring reciprocal market access — that is, they are unilateral grants rather than bilateral agreements. The major schemes are the EU's GSP (Generalised Scheme of Preferences) with its GSP+ (for vulnerable countries committing to specific human-rights and labour conventions) and EBA (Everything But Arms, for least-developed countries) variants; the US GSP (which has had a complicated authorisation history and was un-authorised for an extended period from 2020); the US AGOA (African Growth and Opportunity Act); and various Japanese, Canadian, Norwegian, Swiss, Korean, and Australian schemes.
India is currently a graduated-out country from the EU GSP (since 2014, when its per-capita-income criterion was exceeded) and is not a current GSP beneficiary in the US scheme. African and least-developed-country exporters that retain GSP / EBA access have substantial preferential margins on EU and US import flows, which has been a structural element of African manufacturing-export development since the 2000s.
Operationally, a unilateral preference is invoked through the appropriate certificate of origin (Form A historically, REX self-certification under the EU since 2017, Sect. 502B-style certifications under US AGOA). Unilateral preferences are revocable by the granting country at any time and have been revoked in practice — the most prominent recent revocation being the EU's progressive narrowing of GSP+ benefits for Cambodia over labour-rights concerns from 2020 onward.
FTAs are reciprocal agreements between two or more parties that go beyond the WTO baseline in the depth and breadth of market-access concessions. The AJG Global Nexus FTA registry has 521 entries — slightly larger than the WTO's RTA database because it includes various upgrade protocols, MRA (mutual-recognition-agreement) side-instruments, partial-scope agreements, and bilateral economic-cooperation arrangements that are not always counted as FTAs in narrow definitions but operate as preferential overlays in commercial practice. The active-in-current-commercial-use subset is approximately 273.
FTAs come in increasingly complex forms. A first-generation FTA covers tariffs on goods plus rules of origin. A second-generation FTA adds services market access (under GATS Article V), investment provisions, and government procurement chapters. A third-generation comprehensive FTA — what the EU's "new generation" FTAs and the CPTPP-style FTAs are — covers tariffs, services, investment, government procurement, intellectual property, competition policy, labour and environment chapters, dispute-settlement mechanisms, and increasingly digital-trade and regulatory-cooperation chapters. The CPTPP, USMCA, EU-Vietnam FTA, EU-South Korea FTA, India-UAE CEPA, and India-EFTA TEPA are all third-generation comprehensive agreements.
For a particular consignment, the operationally critical FTA chapters are the goods market-access schedule (which determines the preferential tariff rate), the rules of origin (which determine whether the goods qualify for the preferential rate), the customs procedures chapter (which determines the documentary form for invoking the preference), and where applicable the SPS and TBT chapters (which determine sanitary/phytosanitary and technical-barriers treatment). The trader's decision is therefore: identify the relevant FTA, check whether the consignment satisfies the rules of origin, generate the appropriate certificate of origin, and present at customs.
A customs union is a deeper form of integration than an FTA: it provides for free trade among members and a common external tariff applied to non-members. The EU is the most developed customs union (with the additional features of a single market in services, free movement of persons, and a unified competition and commercial-policy regime). The EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union — Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan) operates as a customs union with a common external tariff. MERCOSUR, the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman), CARICOM, ECOWAS, EAC, COMESA, and several others operate at varying depths of customs-union or economic-bloc integration.
For a consignment, the customs-union effect is typically that the importing country applies the bloc-wide external tariff (rather than its own national tariff) and that intra-bloc movements after first import are duty-free under the bloc's internal-free-circulation rules. A consignment imported into Germany on the EU's external tariff can move freely to Italy, France, or the Netherlands without further duty. A consignment imported into the UAE on the GCC common tariff can move freely to Saudi Arabia. The corollary is that the originating-country choice for a multi-bloc-destination flow is typically less important than the bloc-of-import choice.
Several mega-blocs — the AfCFTA (African Continental Free Trade Area, in progressive operationalisation since 2021), CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership), and RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership covering ASEAN plus Australia, China, Japan, Korea, New Zealand) — are multi-party agreements that operate as enhanced FTAs rather than full customs unions but with structural economic-integration ambitions that extend beyond a typical bilateral FTA.
The 148 corridors indexed at AJG Global Nexus are operational arrangements rather than legal regimes — they describe the physical, logistical, and institutional structures that organise transport along a particular geographic axis. The Belt and Road Initiative is not a single legal instrument but an aggregate of bilateral memoranda, infrastructure-finance agreements, and operational protocols among the participating states. INSTC (the International North-South Transport Corridor) is similar: a multilateral framework agreement under which India, Iran, and Russia coordinate on freight movement along the Indian-Iranian-Caspian-Russian axis. IMEC (the proposed India-Middle-East-Europe Corridor) is at an even earlier stage of formal definition.
For a consignment, the corridor-level overlay typically affects operational realities — vessel and rail scheduling, trans-shipment fees, transit-time guarantees, customs-coordination — rather than the legal-tariff regime. The trader benefits from the corridor when it is operationally functional (the routes work, the through-bills-of-lading can be issued, the customs handoffs are automated) and is unaffected by it when it is not. The 148-corridor index treats each corridor on its operational rather than its political merits.
The harder question — and the one this page exists to address — is what happens when a particular consignment is governed by multiple overlapping overlays. The standing principle in WTO jurisprudence is that the more favourable preferential treatment applies, but the operational reality is that the trader has to actually invoke the right overlay at the customs counter, with the right documentary form, by the right deadline, or the favourable treatment is forfeit. The overlays do not stack automatically; they are alternatives that the trader chooses among.
Concrete example: a consignment of Indian-origin garments to Germany. The relevant overlays are: (1) the WTO baseline (MFN tariff under the EU's CCT for the relevant HS chapter); (2) the EU GSP, from which India graduated in 2014 — therefore not available; (3) any India-EU FTA — currently in negotiation, none in force, therefore not available; (4) the EU is the importing customs union, so the EU's external tariff applies. The applicable overlay is therefore the WTO MFN baseline. There is no preferential overlay to invoke.
Different example: a consignment of UAE-origin aluminium products to India. The relevant overlays are: (1) the WTO baseline; (2) the India-UAE CEPA, in force since May 2022; (3) the GCC common-external-tariff treatment (relevant to the UAE-side of the contract but not the India-side); (4) any sub-product-specific trade-remedy measures India has imposed (anti-dumping, countervailing, safeguard). The CEPA's preferential tariff is invoked through the CEPA's specific certificate-of-origin form, subject to the CEPA's product-specific rules of origin. The trader's decision is to ensure the consignment satisfies the CEPA RoO, generate the CEPA CoO, and present at Indian customs claiming the CEPA preferential rate. If the trader fails to invoke the CEPA correctly, the WTO MFN rate applies — which is materially higher.
Yet another example: a consignment of Vietnamese-origin processed seafood to Germany. The relevant overlays are: (1) WTO baseline; (2) EU GSP — Vietnam is a current GSP beneficiary on certain product lines; (3) EU-Vietnam FTA, in force since August 2020 — covers most product lines. For the seafood lines covered by the EU-Vietnam FTA, the FTA preferential rate is available and is generally more favourable than the GSP rate. The trader's choice is between invoking GSP (REX self-certification, broader product coverage in some segments) and invoking the FTA (FTA-specific certificate of origin, more favourable rate where covered). The right answer is FTA where covered, GSP where the FTA does not extend; the trader has to actually verify the HS-line treatment under each.
The operational decision rule for a trader navigating overlapping overlays has four steps. First, identify all overlays in force on the bilateral pair (origin × destination): WTO baseline, autonomous preferences, FTAs, customs-union memberships, sectoral protocols. Second, for each overlay that offers a preferential rate, check whether the consignment satisfies the overlay's rules of origin and product-specific provisions. Third, where multiple overlays would qualify, calculate the duty-paid landed cost under each and select the most favourable. Fourth, generate the corresponding documentary form and present correctly at customs.
The error mode that traders most commonly fall into is to assume an overlay applies without verifying the rules of origin. A consignment that nominally originates in an FTA partner may not satisfy the FTA's value-added or change-of-tariff-classification origin test, in which case the consignment is non-originating under the FTA and the FTA preference does not apply regardless of the trader's intentions. Customs authorities at the importing end retain audit rights for years after the import event, and an incorrect origin claim can result in back-duty, penalty, and counterparty-trust consequences that substantially exceed the original duty saving. The right discipline is to verify origin substantively, not just nominally.
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