A customs union is a type of trade bloc which is composed of a free trade area with a common external tariff. The participant countries set up common external trade policy, but in some cases they use different import quotas. Common competition policy is also helpful to avoid competition deficiency.
Purposes for establishing a customs union normally include increasing economic efficiency and establishing closer political and cultural ties between the member countries.
It is the third stage of economic integration.
Customs unions are established through trade pacts.
Read more about Customs Union: List of Customs Unions
Famous quotes containing the words customs and/or union:
“Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)
“The methods by which a trade union can alone act, are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily tyrannical.”
—Henry George (1839–1897)