Private standards have increasingly become a contentious issue in the multilateral trading system. The ever increasing number of sector-specific standards developed by businesses, in particular in the food market, may have significant implications for developing countries in terms of market access. Some countries see private food standards as a particular form of non-tariff barriers. The World Trade Organization (WTO) deals with non-tariff barriers in the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement) and in the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Agreement). This paper examines to what extent these agreements cover private standards, as they were originally intended to regulate standard-setting by public authorities. We find that there is an important difference between the SPS Agreement and the TBT Agreement in that the drafters of the latter realized the importance of the private sector in standardsetting. Finally, we discuss whether a 'Code of Good Practice for the Preparation, Adoption and Application of Standards', similar to that under the TBT Agreement, could be adopted under the SPS Agreement.
Rules of Origin (ROO) are in need of reform. Aside from being used for protectionist purposes, they have also become so complicated that they result in companies foregoing trade preferences granted by preferential agreements on a substantial scale. This paper makes the argument for a fundamental reconceptualization of ROO, based on today's Global Value Chains (GVCs). The paper is divided in four sections. First, it surveys the methods currently applied for assigning origin. Existing obstacles to reform are then outlined. A third section briefly examines previous attempts at reforming ROO. Fourth, the contours and possible ramifications of a valueadded approach to determining origin are explored, given that (a) ROO are not suitable for today's world characterized by GVCs; and (b) the tension between bilaterally established rules and multilateral decision-making continues to hamper attempts at harmonization or reform.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.