A team at the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development surveyed the literature on quality standards in an attempt to better characterize when the measures become a form of protectionism. It’s “a complicated task,” write the authors of the center’s report, which will appear in the Annual Review of Economic Resources. “The evidence is mixed regarding standards as catalyst for or impediment against trade and development, reflecting the complexity of these effects and their specificity to industries and countries.”
Many analyses consider quality-standard, non-tariff measures (NTMs) to be nothing but a trade barrier when they are actually more complex in nature, says the paper. “The relevant policy debate is about sorting the NTMs that are essential from those that are inefficient and protectionist and on how to make NTMs more transparent. Further, policy-making bodies should also focus on increasing compatibility of NTMs across trading nations via reciprocity, equivalence, or mutual recognition, and certifications of international standards.”