Tariffs and trade barriers should be barriers established by the country to restrict import and export, such as technical trade barriers: "Technical trade barriers" are also called "technical trade measures" or "technical barriers", which are based on national or regional Technical regulations, agreements, standards and certification systems (conformity assessment procedures) have emerged, covering a wide range of content, covering science and technology, health, quarantine, safety, environmental protection, product quality and certification and many other technical indicator systems, and are used in international trade. Among them, there are flexible and diverse regulations.
The negative impact of technical trade barriers on international trade
1. More and more technical trade barriers (such as national standards and regulations, technical regulations, conformity assessment procedures, etc.) hinder The free development of international trade is not conducive to the free circulation and optimal allocation of world resources, and runs counter to the social development trend of economic globalization and trade liberalization. This is the main basis for trade liberalism to oppose technical trade barriers. For example, most electronic and electrical products are required to comply with the standards of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Underwriters Laboratories (UL) and other relevant agencies; the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires textiles to be marked with ingredient and protective labels, and consumers The Committee on Safety (CPSC) requires the fire resistance of textiles to meet relevant standards; the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for the management and monitoring of imported foods, drugs, health products, cosmetics, detergents, and medical equipment, as well as the purity and labeling of goods. Strict requirements include random inspections when goods enter the country; the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) also requires pork and poultry to undergo strict disinfection procedures. These series of standard requirements and testing measures will undoubtedly bring a lot of inconvenience to international trade and increase the cost of imported goods. 2. Over a long period of time, the distribution of international trade benefits will further tilt toward developed countries. In the current international standards system, standard setters are basically developed countries, while developing countries are mostly passive recipients of standards. The standards set by developed countries based on their own interests and technological level are difficult for many developing countries to meet. Therefore, developed countries often use technical standards to set up trade barriers or even launch technical trade wars to protect their international trade interests, thereby continuing to control developing countries and occupy a dominant position in international trade. For example, my country's frozen chickens have been banned by the European Union since August 1996 on the grounds that they have not passed quarantine. It was not until May 2001 that the ban was lifted on 14 companies in several areas of Shanghai and Shandong, resulting in annual losses of nearly 100 million U.S. dollars; from July 2001 Starting from March, the European Union has made new regulations on imported tea. The maximum allowable pesticide residues in some products are only 1/100-1/200 of the original standards (in fact, tea produced according to the original standards is no longer harmful to the human body), such as If effective measures are not taken, our country's tea will be forced to withdraw from the EU market. According to relevant reports, my country's export reduction in 1999 due to foreign technical regulations, standards and conformity assessment procedures alone amounted to at least US$50 billion. Nowadays, "technical standards trade wars" often occur among developed countries. They are nominally to protect the environment or people's health and life safety, but in fact, their greater purpose is to make domestic traders more competitive in international trade. Get more benefits. According to other statistics, in key technical fields such as life sciences and biotechnology, information technology, and new materials, the number of patents owned by Western developed countries accounts for about 90% of the total global patents, while developing countries including China The state owns only about 10%. Such a large technological gap cannot be narrowed in the short term. Therefore, for a long time, developing countries will be in an increasingly disadvantaged position in the international trade pattern.
The positive effects of technical trade barriers
1. Environmental barriers and green standards objectively promote the implementation of sustainable development. Economic construction and environmental protection are a pair of contradictions that any country will encounter in the development process. However, immediate economic benefits often lead people to choose the path of destroying the environment for economic construction. Especially in some developing countries, due to limited funds, they simply cannot afford to take environmental protection into account. The practice of destroying forests for hunting and depleting lakes for fishing has drastically deteriorated the earth's environment.
Even in our country, although environmental protection has long been regarded as a basic national policy, according to incomplete statistics, the national export value of products affecting the ecological environment reached 8.6 billion US dollars in 1998, accounting for 6.2% of the total exports that year; in 2000, the more polluting products Exports of products (such as dyes, leather products, printing and dyeing products, pulp, etc.) reached US$11 billion, accounting for 5.1% of the year's exports. The implementation of green standards will force Chinese companies to reduce environmental pollution during the production process and adopt green production systems to produce green products. This will objectively promote the implementation of my country's sustainable development strategy. Similarly, to a certain extent, it will also promote the development of the world economy and the protection of the world environment to be coordinated and balanced, which is conducive to protecting the ecological environment of the entire earth while developing the world economy. 2. The constantly improving quarantine standards and packaging design standards encourage countries to continuously improve the quality, hygiene and safety performance of their own products, which has a positive effect on human life safety and health. Especially now that animal and plant epidemics (such as foot-and-mouth disease, mad cow disease, wheat dwarf smut, corn bacterial wilt, etc.) occur from time to time in various countries around the world, and the safety of genetically modified products (GMO) still cannot be scientifically determined, so In international trade, it is very necessary for countries to formulate relevant quarantine standards and strictly implement them.