Standards and Conformity Assessment as Nontariff Barriers to Trade

Sherry M. Stephenson, Organization of American States

10/07/2008
(Original Publish Date: 5/1/1997)

As traditional barriers to trade have fallen, standards, technical regulations, and procedures for assessing conformity have become increasingly important as nontariff barriers to trade. What should developing countries do about it? 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. 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. Developing countries have not been heavily involved in developing international and regional standards; they have been on the sidelines in efforts to rationalize this process. To have greater influence on the development of standards, they should take a more proactive approach to these issues in the International Organization for Standardization, the International Electrical Commission, and related regional and multilateral bodies. This paper - a product of the Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the importance of standards and conformity assessment for trade liberalization and deep integration.