Research On Influences And Strategies Of Technical Barriers To Trade On China's Agricultural Exports

Since the1990s, in the case of traditional non-tariff barriers measures, such as tariffs and quotas, countervailing, antidumping, which are strictly limited by WTO, and in the name of protecting the health of humans, animals and plants, and environmental resources, the technical barriers to trade, because of its features, such as being targeted, good hiding and flexibility, has come to replace tariffs and traditional non-tariff barriers, and in countries, especially developed countries, it has increasingly become main trade protection policy tools and means, producing a far-reaching impact on international trade. In the field of international agricultural trade protectionism, trade disputes caused by the technical barriers to trade have become a new focus, and have an important impact on China's agricultural exports.1. This paper follows the basic logic of ideas:Theoretical analysis-Empirical Analysis-Countermeasures. On the basis of a large number of references to the related literatures domestic and abroad, by use of such research methods as qualitative comparative analysis, theoretical model analysis and empirical model analysis, this paper elaborates the "double-edged" of the technical barriers to trade. It analyzes the technical and political economic reasons for the formation of technical barriers to trade and their influence on exporting countries in trade flows, social welfare and industrial development. This paper also introduces and analyzes the WTO-TBT/SPS international institutional framework1of the technical barriers to trade and the agricultural technical barriers systems of the major developed countries. Finally, this paper makes an empirical description and quantitative measurement of China's agricultural exports being subject to technical barriers, and on the basis of comprehensive analytical deep-seated reasons of China's agricultural exports being subject to technical barriers to trade, the paper, combining our national situations, puts forwards some countermeasures.2. This paper's main conclusions are:1) technical barriers have a dual nature. Within reasonable limits, to limit the goods which cannot meet the technical requirements is beneficial not only to the protection of human, animal and plant health and environmental resources, but also beneficial to normal trade. For the purpose of protecting their industry or market, the governments, by the way of technical barriers to trade, puts restrictions on trade and thus brings distortions on international trade, not only having a negative impact on the export side, but also being detrimental to their well-being level. But in reality, the basic properties of the technical barriers to trade mainly act as important policy tools and instruments of trade protection.2) The formation of technical barriers to trade results from the objective gap between national economic and social development and the technical level, and from the interaction of the governments and market players trying to overcome market failures and seek new means of trade protection. From the perspective of political economy, the policy of technical barriers to trade can be regarded as "public goods", with the characteristic of non-market decision-making. The formation of the technical barriers to trade, is not only the outcome of the game between nations, but also the result of the interest expression and choice of different interest groups and government departments, including different countries'producers, importers and consumers for their respective rights of the resources, and the game process of political and economic game of the parties under the conditions of interest conflicts.3) From a practical point of view, the developed and developing countries show a serious asymmetry in the setting and responding of technical barriers of agricultural products. The United States, Europe, Japan and other developed countries and regions take the initiative to build sophisticated systems of technical barriers to protect their domestic industries and markets, while developing countries, subject to the level of economic development gap, technology gap and system differences of technical measures and other factors, are often in a passive responding situation and assume a more negative consequences.4) In recent years, due to the low level of quality and safety of agricultural products, the lag of technical regulations and standards system, the imperfection of agricultural products quality inspection system and the quality and safety certification system, the limited role of industry associations, the lack of coping capacity of export enterprises, international environmental constraints and other factors, the exports of China's advantageous agricultural products and the major export markets of agricultural products, in the technical barriers to trade continue to experience strikes from abroad, resulting in a greater negative impact on China's agricultural exports and domestic agricultural production.5) Through a gravity model to measure the impact of the number of vegetable pesticide residue limits on vegetable trade and the cross-sectional data of China's vegetable exports in Japan, the United States and the European Union during the16years1994-2009to measure the impact of technical trade barriers to agricultural exports. The analysis of data showed that the standard of vegetable pesticide residues had a more significant negative impact on China's vegetable exports to these countries and regions such as Japan, the United States and the European Union. The more the number of standard is, the greater its negative impact has. The standard number for every increase of10%in importing countries and regions, China's vegetable exports will be reduced by4.16%. In China the improvement of vegetables pesticide residues limits has a certain role in promoting China's vegetable exports.6) Dealing with Technical Barriers to Trade is a systematic project.involving both the macro long-term strategic measures and a tactical coping strategies and specific measures. Fully integrated use of the government, industry associations, businesses of their own resources and advantages, establishing strategic alliances among them, and establishing coping mechanisms with enterprises as a link, industry associations to participate in, and the Government to promote, establishing efficient early warning system of technical barriers to trade are important strategy to deal with foreign technical barriers to trade. Reasonable use of technical barriers to trade regulations, building China's agricultural product quality safety system, and enhancing the competitiveness of China's agricultural products can fundamentally improve our agricultural capacity to deal with technical barriers to trade.3. This paper's possible innovations:1) it illustrates the formation motivation of technical barriers to trade from the perspective of the political economy of trade protection. It analyses the game between the countries setting technical barriers to trade in fully static conditions and under the conditions of incomplete information. By the extension of minimum quality standards (MRQ) model, this paper analyzes the impact of domestic interest groups on the policy options of technical barriers to trade.2) This paper, on the basis of sorting out the literatures on how to quantify the influence of technical barriers to trade, and by use of gravity model, constructs a model to measure the impact of standard number of pesticide residues of vegetables on vegetable trade, to verify the influence of technical trade barriers on agricultural exports. Empirical analysis of China's vegetable export data in Japan, the United States and the European Union2000-2009is also conducted. Japanese Positive List System as a dummy variable is introduced into the model to analyze the overall impact of the system on China's vegetable export market in the United States, Japan and the EU.