Trade protectionism is the common situation in the international trade field, especially when international economy is in declining situation. Many countries have adopted many measures to protect their domestic benefit group and relative industries. As WTO reduces the tariff level step by step and prohibits the non-tariff measures,WTO members have great passion to make use of technical barriers to trade(abbreviated as TBT in the following) through the reasonable targets and “exceptional provisions”. TBT has exerted profound impacts on international trade. According to statistics, in the 1970s TBT has accounted for 10%-30% of non-tariff in foreign trade, while in the late 90s, the proportion has reached 45 per cent. Because of its concealment, flexibility and being difficult to supervise, TBT has become one of the most common-used, most concealed and most effective ways of the new trade protectionism. Being one of the developing countries in the world, China has been limited by such measure because of backward technical level and immature legal system. According to statistics, the export influenced by anti-dumping has accounted for 1 per cent of the total export of the whole year in China. While as far as TBT is concerned, the proportion has exceeded 25%, worth US$45-50 billion. Chinese agricultural products, textile, toy, electro-mechanical products and hi-tech products have been badly influenced more or less. TBT has replaced anti-dumping and ranked No.1 among all non-tariff measures. So it has realistic and studying meaning to study the theory of TBT, its outside display, its characteristics and performance system.
Trade protectionism is the basic theory of TBT. To begin with, the paper explains the theory of trade protectionism and the relationship of trade protectionism and TBT. Next the paper shows the concept, its outside display and its characteristics. Furthermore, based on the analysis of TBT functional mechanism, I have analyzed the static and dynamic economic effects on trade parties through partial equilibrium model and general equilibrium model. In addition, the dissertation has taken a thorough look on the restriction of WTO, especially those in TBT agreement and SPS agreement of WTO. On the basis of above, I have given analysis of these agreements and its functions on international trade.
The developed countries are the main creators and users of technical barriers to trade in the world. They have set up a full set of mature and profound system about TBT. The dissertation has provided the reasonable measures for constructing Chinese TBT system based on the summarization of developed countries’ experience. Such is the final and important target of this dissertation.
Keywords: trade protectionism technical barriers to trade analysis model WTO China’s policies