1. Conformity assessment procedures can become a major barrier to trade
As traditional barriers to trade have fallen, standards, technical regulations, and procedures for
assessing conformity have become increasingly important as nontariff barriers to trade. But
relatively little is know about the extent and nature of those barriers and even less about their
quantitative impact, especially in developing countries. To facilitate trade, regional initiatives on
standards and conformity assessment appear to be more promising than a multilateral approach
because of the greater trust and commonality of interest at the regional level- with regard to
mutual recognition agreements.
Ammendment For reasons of both efficiency and cost, developing countries should adopt the
standards of their major trading partners rather than develop their own national standards.
2. there is no established methodology for evaluating the economic effects of TBTs
the framework provides an estimate of the upper bound of the potential costs to U.S. exporters,
not an estimate of the potential costs per se. As such, it would be inappropriate to assert that
the costs of a particular TBT would be “X” dollars, based on a framework calculation; rather, they
could be no more than “X” dollars.
Ammendment prudent use would require an assessment as to how far beneath the upper
bound the true costs would likely lie.
3. The Current State of Metrics and Measures
few of the cited economic studies define TBTs strictly in terms of a measure’s consistency with
WTO commitments in terms of the vocabulary of TBT Agreement, they nevertheless provide
insight to the task at hand.
Ammendment The findings strongly suggest the necessity of developing a flexible approach that
can support a considerable amount of institutional and operational detail.
