"Technical Barriers to Trade" also known as "technical trade measures" or "technical barriers", based on national or regional technical regulations, protocols, standards and certification systems (conformity assessment procedures) and other forms, involving a wide range of covers of science technology, health, quarantine, security, environmental protection, product quality and certification, and many other technical indicators and apply them in international trade, showing a flexible, agile, the numerous provisions.
Technical Barriers to Trade - Category WTO "Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement" will be technical trade Technical Barriers to Trade Barriers are divided into technical regulations, technical standards and conformity assessment procedures.
1, technical regulations Technical regulations is to require mandatory product characteristics or their related processes and production methods, including the applicable regulations, including documents, such as the product, process or production method of nomenclature, symbols, packaging, marking or labeling requirements.
2, Technical Standards Technical standards are approved by recognized institutions to provide non-mandatory, and for general or repeated use products or related processes and production methods, rules, guidelines, or characteristics of documents. Can see that technical regulations and technical standards are different in nature, the key difference is that the former than mandatory, while the latter is not compulsory.
3, conformity assessment procedures Conformity assessment procedure is in accordance with International Organization for Standardization (International Organization for Standardization, ISO) requirements, according to technical rules and standards, production, product, quality, safety, environmental and other sectors as well as the entire security system and a comprehensive monitoring, review and inspection , after passing by the State or outside the authority to grant a certificate of competency or compliance mark to prove that a product or service meet the required standards and technical specifications. Conformity assessment procedures, including product certification and system certification are two aspects: product certification is to confirm whether the products meet the technical requirements or standards requirements; system certification refers to the production or management systems to confirm compliance with relevant regulations. The most popular of contemporary international system has ISO9000 certified quality management system certification and ISO14000 environmental management system certification. Technical Barriers to Trade - key measures Looking around the world (mainly in developed countries) and technical barriers to trade and its restrictions on imports of technical measures related mainly to the following categories:
1, strict and complicated technical regulations and technical standards The use of technical standards as trade barriers with non-reciprocal and covert. In international trade, developed countries are often international standard setters. With them in the dominant position in world trade and technological advantages, the first rules of the game, forced to implement according to their skill levels to set technical standards, so that the economically backward country's export manufacturers catch up. And that these technical standards, technical regulations often change, some local governments also have their own special requirements so that manufacturers in developing countries either never be known, at a loss, either to pay in order to meet their standards, higher costs, weaken the competitiveness of their products.
2, complex procedures for conformity assessment The trend of trade liberalization had become the situation, quality certification and conformity assessment for the improvement of export competitiveness and import markets of the protective effect of becoming ever more prominent. At present, the world's widely used quality standard ISO9000 series of standards identified. In addition, the United States, Japan and the European Union each have their own technical standards system. 3, the strict packaging, labeling rules To prevent the packaging and the waste may be on the ecol
ogical environment, human and pose a threat to the safety of animals and plants, many countries have enacted a series of packaging and labeling laws and regulations to protect the interests of consumers and the environment. From the perspective of environmental protection and energy conservation, packaging system does indeed have a positive effect, but it increases the cost of exporters, and the technical requirements varies across countries, volatile foreign exporters are often forced to constantly changing packaging, lost a lot of trade opportunities.
