Annual Report on Trade Barriers Highlights Ag, Customs, Motor Vehicle Standards

The annual report on foreign trade barriers, which covers intellectual property, agricultural exports and e-commerce, as well as all other goods and services, highlighted non-tariff barriers to ag exports, such as sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures that are not based on science, burdensome facility registration requirements, and barriers to poultry in countries affected by highly pathogenic avian influenza that are not justified by the risk, in the U.S. view.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, producer of the report, highlighted India, Mexico and Turkey's biotechnology approval processes and the EU's policies on "innovative crop protection technologies."

It also complained that Colombia, Egypt, Laos, Morocco, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan do not accept U.S. motor vehicle safety standards, and so cars built in the U.S. cannot be exported to those markets.

The report said that individual countries within the EU have disparate procedures or policies in customs, labeling, packaging waste, IP protection and enforcement, or concerning ag biotech.

The report said it didn't mention every single barrier to exports. "Where government-to-government consultations related to specific foreign practices were proceeding at the time of this ... Report’s publication, [those] were excluded, in order to avoid prejudice to these consultations," the report said.

The report's authors also said that some barriers to exports are not ones that the U.S. is trying to convince partners to lift.

"Each trading partner has a sovereign right to adopt measures in furtherance of legitimate public purposes. However, in some cases a government might pretextually claim that a measure is in furtherance of a legitimate public purpose. In such circumstances, the facts surrounding the measure will be important in evaluating whether the measure is indeed in furtherance of a legitimate public purpose and not an unjustified barrier to trade."