What are trade barriers? What are the causes of trade barriers?

Trade barriers are artificial restrictions on the exchange of foreign goods and services, mainly referring to various restrictions imposed by a country on the import of foreign goods and services. So how much do you know about trade barriers? The following is what I have compiled about trade barriers, I hope you like it!

The causes of trade barriers

The emergence and continuous strengthening of trade barriers is not accidental. It is the product of the continuous development of international economy, society and science and technology. Analysis of the causes of new trade barriers mainly lies in the following points.

1. With the social progress and the improvement of people's living standards in developed countries, people's awareness of safety and health has never been stronger, and they are paying more and more attention to the impact of products on their health and safety, so that new trade barriers with health, safety and hygiene as the main content in international trade are increasing.

2. With the improvement of environmental awareness, the concept of sustainable development is deeply rooted in people's hearts, and people pay more and more attention to the sustainable development of the earth and society on which they live, so it is required that the products themselves and their production and processing processes in international trade should not be at the expense of destroying the environment or sacrificing the environment; At the same time, it is required that the production of these products cannot be at the expense of workers' health. Therefore, new trade barriers such as green barriers and social barriers will appear constantly in international trade.

3. The increasing number of new trade barriers has much to do with the constraints of traditional trade barriers. The use of traditional trade barriers such as tariffs, licenses and quotas will not only be restricted by international conventions and condemned by international public opinion, but also be vulnerable to reciprocal retaliation. Therefore, there is not much room for the development of these traditional trade barriers in the future, which provides a huge space for the development of new trade barriers such as green barriers.

The rapid development of science and technology provides conditions and means for the development of new trade barriers. The proportion of technology-intensive products in international trade is increasing, especially information technology products, which involve complex technical problems and are easy to form new trade barriers. At the same time, the development of high-sensitivity and high-tech detection instruments has greatly improved the detection accuracy and provided technical and material conditions for some countries to set up new trade barriers.

Due to the weak economic growth, major developed countries have a tendency of rising trade protectionism. With the weakening of traditional trade barriers, they seek new trade barriers to protect their domestic industries.

Characteristics of trade barriers

International trade barriers are divided into tariff barriers and non-tariff barriers, aiming at protecting the national economy from foreign products. However, excessive trade protection is not conducive to a country's economic development. The World Trade Organization aims to advocate free trade. After China's entry into WTO, China's export is facing the situation that tariff barriers are gradually weakened and textile quotas are gradually cancelled. At the same time, other trade barriers encountered are more serious than before, which is manifested in the following aspects:

1, foreign anti-dumping efforts against China products increased. The countries that carry out anti-dumping against China are not only developed countries such as Europe, America, Australia, Canada and Japan, but also some developing countries such as Turkey, Egypt and India. The products involved are both daily necessities industry and electromechanical industry, including finished products, minerals and aquaculture products; Statistics show that since 1990s, anti-dumping cases in China have accounted for 1/7- 1/6 of the world total. After China's entry into WTO, this proportion has greatly increased, and China has become the main target country of foreign anti-dumping.

2. Technical barriers have become the main obstacle to the export of China products. Broad technical barriers to trade include technical regulations, technical standards and conformity assessment procedures, product quarantine and inspection systems and measures, packaging and labeling regulations, information technology barriers and green barriers. The technical barriers to trade faced by China's export products mainly come from the United States, the European Union and Japan. The industries involved mainly include agriculture, textile and garment industry, light industry, electromechanical industry, Minmetals chemical industry and medical and health care industry. According to the data, 70% of China's export enterprises and 40% of its export products are restricted by technical barriers to trade.

3. China's export products are also restricted by intellectual property protection, such as the "337" clause of the United States, and the legislation on the transitional safeguard mechanism for China's special products from Europe and America.

The essence of trade barriers

universality

From the product point of view, it involves not only primary products related to human health, but also all intermediate products and industrial finished products; From the process point of view, it includes the whole product life cycle of research and development, production, processing, packaging, transportation, sales and consumption; From the field, it has expanded from tangible goods to services such as finance and information trade, investment, intellectual property rights and environmental protection.

systematicness

Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) is a system, which includes not only the contents stipulated in the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade, but also the measures stipulated in the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and the General Agreement on Trade in Services. Both the Agreement on Agriculture and the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights stipulate environmental issues.

term of validity

More than 50 multilateral environmental protection agreements have been signed internationally. Developed countries actively formulate technical standards and regulations to provide legal support for technical barriers to trade. The WTO is also formulating international technical standards and regulations.

cheat

Technical barriers to trade are reasonable, that is, appropriate barrier measures can be taken to achieve the prescribed legal objectives. Normal technical barriers to trade refer to legal and reasonable technical measures to achieve the purpose of reasonably protecting human health and safety and ecological environment. On the other hand, some countries, especially the United States, Japan and the European Union, rely on their own technological and economic advantages to formulate technical standards, regulations and certification systems that are stricter than international standards and implement trade protectionism in the name of technical barriers to trade.

Concealment and flexibility

Compared with other non-tariff barriers such as import quotas and licenses, technical barriers to trade not only cover up differences such as unreasonable distribution and discrimination, but also have complex technical standards, which often make it difficult for exporting countries to cope with and adapt. Due to the uncertainty and plasticity of technical barriers to trade measures, they are easily used by developed countries to formulate targeted technical standards for foreign products in concrete implementation and operation, and have the characteristics of flexible implementation.

controversial

Because technical barriers to trade involve a wide range, some of them are quite complicated, and they have formal legitimacy and concealment in the implementation process, different countries have different evaluation criteria from different angles, so it is difficult for countries to coordinate with each other, which is easy to cause disputes, and it takes a long time to resolve disputes.

After 1970s, the trade wars in the international economic field mainly focused on general commodity trade, but after 1950s, the international trade wars will gradually focus on technical barriers to trade. The reasons for trade barriers "people also: