According to the WTO/TBT Agreement (World Trade Organization Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade), WTO members have the right to formulate necessary technical trade measures (technical regulations, standards and conformity assessment procedures) to ensure that It achieves legitimate goals and should forward the notification through the WTO Secretariat after the draft is formed but before it is formally approved, so that other interested members can be aware of it. Therefore, paying attention to WTO/TBT notifications in a timely manner and responding to technical trade measures in advance will help companies and industries develop with high quality, avoid international trade risks, and improve international market competitiveness.
China is the world’s largest textile producer, exporter and consumer. China’s textile output accounts for more than half of the world’s and its international market share exceeds 1/3 of the world. In 2019, my country Exports of clothing and clothing accessories amounted to US$151.3676 billion, accounting for 6.06% of the country’s total exports of goods.
Jiangsu Provincial Institute of Quality and Standardization has sorted out the textile-related TBT notifications issued by the WTO in 2019 for reference.
Number of notifications
In 2019, a total of 21 WTO members issued 190 TBT notifications related to textiles. Among them, 82 were routine notifications, 104 were supplemented, 3 were corrected, and 1 was revised.
Notified products
Judging from the products involved in the notification, there are 127 involving textile, clothing and fiber products , 46 involving footwear products.
Notifying Countries
From the perspective of notifying countries, developing countries such as Africa and South America have a relatively large number of notifications. Five countries, including Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and Tanzania, issued 146 notifications, accounting for 76.84%.
Reasons for notification
The most common reason for issuing TBT notifications for textiles in 2019 is “quality requirements” (29.71 %), followed by “prevention of fraud and consumer protection” (22.29%), “consumer information, labeling” (21.33%) and “protection of human health or safety” (14.67%).
In the textile and apparel industry in 2019, market countries such as Africa and South America issued a large number of TBT notifications for quality requirements, consumer protection, labeling and other target reasons. Exceeding traditional developed country markets.
It is recommended that my country’s textile export enterprises pay close attention to the textile TBT notification information in emerging markets such as Africa and the “One Belt and One Road”, understand the technical regulations and standard trends of related products, and establish and improve An early warning mechanism to deal with trade barriers to ensure smooth export of products.
