Technical barriers to trade
Technical barriers to trade are technical regulations, standards, and conformity assessment procedures that, by varying from country to country, can increase the costs associated with trade and reduce the potential gains from trade transactions between importers and exporters.
Regulations and standards are not always barriers to trade. According to the multilateral rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), in particular the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Agreement) of the WTO, trade barriers are measures that constitute unnecessary obstacles to trade. In other words, they are measures that, on the grounds of safeguarding legitimate policy objectives, such as consumer safety, environmental protection, or public health, are adopted in such a way as to reduce the conditions of access to a market for a given good or sector.
As part of the TBT Agreement, WTO members have committed to ensuring that technical regulations are not prepared, adopted or applied with a view to creating unnecessary barriers to international trade. Thus, governments must conduct an analysis that weighs the necessity of the measure adopted to meet legitimate policy objectives.
Examples of technical regulations that can become barriers to trade include, among others: product registration procedures, which can be excessively costly for the producer or exporter; conformity assessment procedures, which can be very costly or time-consuming; excessive information requirements on product labels, which are not necessarily useful to the consumer.
To discourage countries from adopting measures that create unnecessary obstacles to trade, WTO Members have undertaken an obligation to notify the WTO Committee on Technical Barriers of all regulations and draft regulations that have an impact on trade, so that other Members can learn about them and, as appropriate, request clarification from the country that issued the regulations. Almost a thousand new technical regulations or amendments to regulations already in force are notified to the WTO each year.
The WTO developed the ePing tool, which allows users to receive notification alerts based on specific filters. In Brazil, Inmetro is designated as the National Notifying Authority and the Brazilian Focal Point under the TBT Agreement. The institute also updates the “Alerta Exportador” portal with Portuguese translations of notified technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures.
Technical barriers are a frequent theme on the agenda of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, both in bilateral meetings and agreements, and in multilateral meetings. In order to enable government agencies to receive information on the existence of barriers to Brazilian exports, the “Sem Barreiras” system was developed, a joint initiative by Itamaraty, the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply.