When one talks about international trade agreements, one is normally accustomed to think in terms of tariffs, rules on intellectual property, ecommerce and customs facilitation. What about technical standards? The Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement covers the issue of standards in international trade and ensures that standards are not trade restrictive and discriminatory. However, who sets these standards? International standard setting bodies come into the fray. However, who plays a role in these international standard setting bodies?
An interesting piece coming from engineers in UK on standard setting emphasizes the importance of setting standards internationally, playing a role in it and ensuring trade agreements protect one's own standards instead of adopting the trading partners standards.
On how settings technical standards in the engineering field are important for the UK:
Standards underpin the daily work of British engineers. From technical drawings to quality management, a huge array of standards enable the engineering industry to deliver world class projects safely and efficiently. These standards ensure that the process is as smooth as possible for British companies, allow consumers to know that their safety and security has been prioritised and can support regulation.
The UK achieves this through the work of the national standards body, BSI. We bring together expert stakeholders – over 13,000 of them – to put forward their views in our specialist committees across all sectors. With all UK stakeholders represented, we create a national body of knowledge in a collection of standards that is coherent and non-conflicting.
On how UK standards, become the international standard and is thus a facilitator for more exports:
The UK, through BSI, is already one of the most influential members of the international standards community. We participate in more ISO committees than any other country. Many of the world’s best known international standards started as British Standards, in areas such as quality management, asset management and building information modelling.
On how standard setting is important for trade deals he piece opines:
BSI works closely with the government to support trade deals that maximise the opportunities from the strategic use of international standards. We encourage the government to make the best use of our expertise and that of our committee members, and have proposed the creation of a cross-cutting advisory group that looks at the risks and opportunities from ‘technical barriers to trade’ issues that may go unnoticed without expert input.
However, if the US pushes for a similar approach to standards that it agreed with Canada and Mexico, the UK government could be required to call up in regulation US standards in place of British Standards. US standards have no systematic input from British businesses or consumers in areas vital to our engineering industry. Recognising US standards in support of regulatory conformity in the UK in place of or as an alternative to British Standards would create complexity and cost for industry and undermine UK influence in international standards-making.
And finally what are the costs for UK businesses for adopting a different standard:
However, to fully grasp the global trading opportunities we see before us, government must retain the UK’s regulatory autonomy supported by a coherent set of national standards. To do otherwise would put UK engineering companies, wider industry and consumers at a severe disadvantage. Let’s accept where we have different systems for using standards with regulation and focus on the future.
Very interesting thought coming out from the business stakeholders who actually do business post the trade agreement. It signifies how important it is to be rule setters in standard setting rather than rule receivers to protect one's business interests. Well, for developing economies, one of the main issues is that they have been rule receivers in almost all fields of international trade norm setting, not just standards.Therefore, it is not just tariffs, ecommerce rules, subsidies that one has to watch out for - standard setting is the next great frontier!
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