National treatment is a legal concept requiring foreign citizens and products be treated no less favorably than a host country’s own citizens and domestic like products. In international trade law, after foreign goods have entered the market, a national treatment clause (if in place) will ensure that internal taxes, regulations and laws do not discriminate against the entrant. Because national treatment applies only after a product, service, or intellectual property has entered the market, customs duties applied on imports do not constitute a violation, even if domestic like products are not charged a similar tax.
National treatment is a common subject in international commercial transactions. National treatment clauses are included in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Article III; the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) Article XVII and the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Article III, which was later incorporated into the World Trade Organization (WTO) framework. As a result, national treatment clauses are frequently found in bilateral and multilateral investment agreements.
In intellectual property, national treatment clauses form the basis of many international copyright treaties. As a result, when copyright infringement suits are brought, the applicable law for the case will be the copyright law of the forum country, even if the copyrighted work was created in a different country.
National treatment differs from conditional national treatment, in which a country provides national treatment to foreign citizens based upon the condition that foreign countries provide a similar treatment to its citizens.
[Last reviewed in March of 2026 by the Wex Definitions Team]