The direct impact of the new trade barriers is that many of our products due to technical, environmental or labor factors can not enter the target market or forced to exit the target market. Caused by this situation for three reasons: First, China's exports do not meet the standard requirements of importing countries, was rejected; Second, the trade object countries arbitrarily raise the standard, resulting in export enterprises can not be achieved; Third, the standard increases the cost of exports, some exporters can not afford to pay the costs, had to withdraw from the market. Specific performance are the following:
1, because our products do not meet the requirements of the importing country's environmental and technical standards, is restricted from imports. Due to the higher technical requirements of developed countries, some of China's products in the environment, health and safety technical standards do not meet the requirements of importing countries are restricted imports are common. For example, from January 1998, in more than 20 warehouses across the United States have been found to come from China's wooden packaging materials contain aspens, and in mid-January in Chicago found that some trees have been damaged by aspens. September 11, 1998, the U.S. Department of Agriculture signed a new decree requiring all wooden packaging from China to take a rigorous inspection requirements, all packaging must be high-temperature treatment, fumigation, or protective agent treatment, otherwise, all of the packaging must be treated, fumigation, or protective agent treatment. or protective agent treatment, otherwise, all incoming goods will be refused entry. Although after our government's repeated negotiations, but the U.S. government still announced that from December 17 that year will prohibit China's wooden box packaging products into the U.S. territory. The United Kingdom, the European Union and others also announced that they would take urgent measures against the wooden packaging of products departing from China and implement new quarantine standards. According to estimates at the time, the EU's decision alone affected at least more than $7 billion of China's export trade to Europe.
2, due to the importing country to implement some kind of new mandatory regulations or standards, was restricted imports. Developed countries often promulgate mandatory decrees, the technical requirements of imported products to be strictly limited in order to prevent the entry of environmentally and humanly harmful products. Such as Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province in 2000, there are two textile enterprises export fabrics due to the use of banned azo dyes by the German "blocking". In fact, the German government as early as July 28, 1994 issued a decree prohibiting the use of textiles in the formation of 20 kinds of carcinogenic aromatic amines can be decomposed in any one of the azo dyes. Later, the bill was amended several times, the number of carcinogenic aromatic amines increased to 22, the number of banned azo dyes increased to 118. After the implementation of this provision in Germany, some other EU member states have followed suit. In recent years, the EU has also been brewing to draft a decree restricting the use and sale of products containing azo dyes, and it is likely that the legislation on the banning of azo dyes will be completed in the near future.
3, because the importing country to take unreasonable regulations or standards, was restricted imports. Developed countries sometimes set nearly harsh technical standards to protect their industries in order to restrict the import of certain types of products. For example, on July 10, 2002, the Japanese government issued a vegetable importers to "self-restriction on imports" of Chinese frozen vegetables directive. The reason is that in the Chinese frozen vegetables found in the inspection of the pesticide "chlorpyrifos" content exceeds the Japanese standard, up to 0.07 PPM. the Japanese government requires vegetable importers must be pesticides exceeding the standard of imported frozen vegetables all destroyed. In fact, the so-called Chinese frozen vegetables pesticide residue limit exceeds the standard, is entirely due to the Japanese government on my frozen vegetables to develop the "chlorpyrifos" residue limit standard is too high. Japan imports 4-5 million tons of vegetables every year, 99% from China. In order to limit China's vegetable imports, Japan's vegetables imported from China, "chlorpyrifos" residue limit of no more than 0.01PPM, but the limited standard for the country's mass production of radish is 3PPM, a difference of 300 times more. Last year, due to Japan's imports of agricultural products in China to implement harsh quarantine standards, resulting in China's agricultural products is difficult to enter the Japanese market.
4, due to the importing country to limit imports and the implementation of double standards, was restricted imports. Some countries implement double quarantine standards for imports and domestic products, so that China's exports suffered unfair treatment. For example, the European Union banned imports of animal origin products from China is a typical case of double standards. January 31, 2002, the European Union issued a resolution to ban imports of Chinese animal origin products from China. The resolution involved 94 enterprises in China, with a trade balance of US$623 million, and some enterprises with a single export market and product structure were on the verge of bankruptcy as a result of the incident, which involved a workforce of nearly 50,000 people. The reason for banning imports was that chloramphenicol in my animal origin products exceeded its regulation of 0.1-0.3 PPB. at that time, only in the port of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, there were 265 containers of my animal origin products stranded. Moreover, the number of problematic containers detected by the EU is increasing. Once destroyed, my export enterprises will suffer huge market losses. According to the EU regulations, any processed food containing 2%-3% animal origin ingredients should be extended and traced back from the market to be recalled and destroyed. in the middle and end of March 2002, the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Foodstuffs, Native Produce and Animal Husbandry organized a delegation and went to Luxembourg, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, and Denmark to carry out civil lobbying and negotiation, and found that the official laboratories in Holland and Germany made the trace chloramphenicol which does not cause any danger to human beings. It was found that the official laboratories of the Netherlands and Germany made the test report and the legislative regulation that the chloramphenicol testing standard of veal exported to the United States was not more than 10PPB, but the EU concealed the test result that a certain amount of chloramphenicol would not be harmful to human beings from the public. On the one hand, the EU banned imports of Chinese products on the grounds that they exceeded the chloramphenicol standard, while at the same time it allowed its members to export chloramphenicol-containing animal products to other countries (including Arctic shrimp exported to China that were also found to exceed the chloramphenicol standard). This practice is obviously not in line with the WTO principle of non-discrimination. In addition, the EU requires that the standard of chloramphenicol content in my animal origin products should not be more than 0.1-0.3PPB, but in fact, most of the instruments in the laboratories in the world at present are difficult to do so, not to mention the experimental instruments in developing countries, even the EU countries themselves do not have the conditions to implement the accurate detection of chloramphenicol content in all products. It is said that there are only two laboratories in the EU that are capable of detecting 0.3 PPB. Therefore, even the importers in the EU think that "the EU is imposing on the underdeveloped countries what it cannot yet do itself, and it is using its own laws to trap others in something that has not yet been scientifically finalized in the international arena, and it is a new kind of plundering of the underdeveloped countries. "
(ii) the impact on product competitiveness
The indirect impact of new trade barriers on enterprises is manifested in the impact on product competitiveness. First, the enterprise technology, environmental protection and for the improvement of workers' labor conditions of the investment are directly increase the cost of products, thus losing the product price advantage, weakening its competitiveness in the international market. Secondly, there is a lack of advanced testing equipment in China, and the import of a large number of equipment increases the cost of export enterprises. Third, the enterprise to obtain the relevant certification fees have increased the cost of enterprises accordingly. Specific forms of performance are:
1, did not get the relevant certification products market competitiveness is greatly reduced. At present, as people pay more and more attention to health and the environment, environmental management system certified enterprise products or environmental labeling certification of the product is more and more favored, which leads to no environmental management system certified enterprise products or did not get the environmental labeling certification of the product market competitiveness is greatly reduced. A product with environmental labeling indicates that it not only meets the quality standards, but also complies with environmental protection requirements during production, consumption and disposal, and will not cause damage to the ecological environment and human health. If there are two identical products on the market, one with environmental labeling and the other without, then consumers tend to choose the former even if the price of the former is higher than the latter. For example, Xiamen Silk Import and Export Company's silk garments were very popular with the company's French partners, and the French side wanted to import them, but because these silk garments did not have access to environmental labeling, Xiamen Silk Export Company's French partners were unable to get import quotas from the French government, and thus the deal did not work out.
2, in order to meet the relevant standards and increase the cost of raw materials to weaken the competitiveness of products. As developed countries continue to improve product inspection and quarantine standards, China's enterprises to meet the standards to purchase higher-priced raw materials, resulting in higher production costs, weakening the competitiveness of products in the international market. Such as textile exports in the European Union countries in the inspection of several important indicators, that is, the azo dyes and 19 kinds of disperse dyes (dyeing raw materials of several harmful chemical compounds) whether or not to exceed the standard. After accession to the WTO, the hometown of textile Shaoxing has an unprecedented export momentum, but many Shaoxing textiles in European countries repeatedly frustrated, most of the problems in the dyes. To solve this problem, we must start from the chemical industry that provides dyes. Although there are hundreds of domestic production of dyes, but more than 60% of the environmentally friendly reactive dyes market is controlled by Germany BASF and other large foreign companies, its price is equivalent to twice the domestic enterprises. However, due to the lack of stability in the performance of similar domestic dyes, textile exporters have to bear the pain of spending high prices to buy imported dyes. In this way, the original price advantage of China's textile products is at stake.
3, technology, environmental protection, as well as improve labor conditions of the input to increase costs, weakening the competitiveness of enterprises. As multinational buyers require our enterprises or products to obtain ISO9000, ISO14000, SA8000 and environmental marking, safety marking and other related certificates, our enterprises and their products must be environmental protection, safety and health to put forward higher requirements, which is a heavy burden on most of the enterprises in China. If our enterprises want to become the suppliers of multinational buyers, they must meet the standards and requirements put forward by them. For example, if the enterprise wants to become the United States General Electric Company (GE) suppliers, after the application, GE will send technicians to investigate the daily management process of enterprises in line with GE's environmental protection, health and safety standards, the standard covers a very wide range, even including summer heat and winter heat preservation facilities are complete, the plant safety exit is set up reasonably, on the workers of the medical treatment equipment, cafeteria construction and so on! The specific indicators are formulated according to the actual situation of each supplier's enterprise. The technicians will make an evaluation report based on the field visit and list the items that need to be improved according to the report. If the enterprise is willing to cooperate with GE to meet its standards, cooperation will be possible. Orders are placed only after the inspection and remodeling are completed. Obviously, enterprises have to invest considerable human, material and financial resources to obtain orders, however, sometimes only a small number of orders.
4, too high inspection and quarantine costs lead to a decline in product competitiveness. Due to the high cost of inspection in importing countries, so that China's originally very competitive products have lost price competitiveness. 2002, Japan's exports to China's agricultural products, aquatic products inspection and quarantine measures continue to strengthen the scope of inspection and quarantine has been involved in all the exports of agricultural products, aquatic varieties of Japan, an increase in the detection of pesticide residues of up to 43 kinds of items; batch inspection leads to slow down the customs clearance of imports to increase the cost of demurrage, increase the cost of inspection, these have greatly increased the cost of inspection. Inspection costs, these have greatly increased the inspection costs to 44% of the value of the goods, and cause a decline in product quality, so that the products lose competitiveness, thereby forcing Japanese importers to reduce the purpose of ordering. For example, Japan's eel exports to me to implement the airport 48 hours of hanging water test caused a large number of deaths, forcing me to stop eel exports to Japan. According to statistics, in 2002, China's production or storage of river eel (ko eel) exports, the number of 8.6% less than the previous year, the amount of 4.6% less. Again, vegetables, short freshness period, and batch inspection leads to slow down the import customs clearance, resulting in a decline in the quality of vegetables, and at the same time, due to an increase in the number of samples, the inspection cost from the original 50,000 yen per batch to 800,000 yen, the high cost of forcing the Japanese importers to cancel the order of our country one after another.
5, expensive certification costs lead to a decline in competitiveness of enterprise products. Developed countries often require our products to obtain certification to enter the country's market. However, the cost of obtaining and maintaining certification is very high, which directly affects the competitiveness of the product. For example, the establishment and implementation of ISO14001 certification costs are high, these costs include long-term environmental review and the establishment of environmental management systems, technical consulting, certification costs and improve environmental pollution equipment, pollutant testing, staff environmental training costs and so on. At present, China's application for ISO14001 certification costs, only consulting fees, system set up costs, audit fees and certification costs generally need 20-30 million yuan (not including environmental equipment investment). This is for some smaller enterprises, it is more difficult to bear.
Two, China's response
New trade barriers in the 21st century will become the world's mainstream trade barriers, international trade has far-reaching implications. As most of China's export commodity structure belongs to labor-intensive products, the low cost of labor is China's most important comparative advantage, so the impact of new trade barriers on our country will be even greater, will become China's foreign trade in the face of the biggest obstacles, must pay great attention. To cope with the new trade barriers, the key lies in the enterprises to comprehensively improve the overall competitiveness, improve the technological content and grade of the products, strengthen the environmental management and occupational safety management, set up the concept of sustainable development, from the comprehensive ability to shorten the gap with the enterprises of developing countries. At the same time, because the new trade barriers involve technology, law and administration and other aspects and various departments, the government must play a leading role in helping enterprises to improve their overall competitiveness and break through the new trade barriers.
(I) government countermeasures
1, the development of sustainable development strategy for exports. The strategy of sustainable development has become the basic strategy of our country, and the export trade must be subject to this basic strategy, which requires not only the pursuit of export growth in quantity, but also the pursuit of export growth in quality, and its coordinated development with ecological and environmental protection and society as a whole. According to the requirements of the national sustainable development strategy, foreign trade and economic cooperation departments should also establish a sustainable development strategy for exports, the establishment of sustainable development assessment index system, to encourage the export of those environmentally friendly products and credit support, the establishment of sustainable development demonstration zones in coastal development zones in the ripe conditions to establish a number of sustainable development in the export of a number of enterprises to contribute to the sustainable development of a typical enterprise.
2, the establishment of technical regulations and standards system in line with international standards. In a fairly long period of time in the future, the most used new trade barriers in developed countries will be technical regulations and technical standards. In the early 1980s of the last century, Britain, France, Germany and other countries to adopt international standards has reached 80%, Japan's newly developed national standards are more than 90% of the use of the International Organization for Standardization standards. At the same time, the overall level of technical barriers in China and the developed countries have a gap of two to three decades, the use of international standards and advanced foreign standards is far from meeting the requirements. 90 years, China has accelerated the adoption of international standards, the development and revision of standards after 1997, the rate of adoption of international standards has accounted for 60%, but as a whole, China's adoption of international standards is still very backward. Therefore, further measures should be taken to accelerate the pace of adoption of international standards. On the other hand, the adoption of the text is not the same as the adoption of products, the adoption of international standards focus on enterprises, the most important thing is to promote a large number of export enterprises to actively adopt international standards.
At the same time, China should organize more standardization experts to participate in the development of international standards, some of the opinions and requirements of our country, fully reflected in international standards to create conditions for the smooth entry of our products into the international market. To this end, it is recommended that the relevant departments should seriously study the dynamics of the standardization work of developed countries and actively undertake the work of the ISO secretariat and other standardization organizations, so as to strive for the incorporation of the higher level standards formulated by China into the international standards or to fully reflect and embody the opinions and interests of our country during the formulation of the standards by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). To encourage enterprises with the conditions to actively participate in the development of international standards, tracking the whole process of international standard-setting. For international trade friction arising from the standard issue, China should participate in the coordination, so as not only to recover the direct economic losses, but also to accumulate valuable experience.
3, the establishment of a unified standardized product certification and accreditation system. Certification is to prove that the end products produced by enterprises and production management system in line with certain regulations and standards of conformity assessment procedures. Although most certification is voluntary, but it is increasingly important in international trade. Product certification and management system certification, quality certification and environmental certification, are enterprises to the international market a green light. Many enterprise products is because of the lack of certification and was rejected by the international market. Therefore, the government must establish a unified standardized product certification and accreditation system to ensure the impartiality and authority of the certification body. Firmly outlaw unserious certification bodies, encourage the development and growth of domestic certification bodies and actively establish cooperative relations with well-known foreign certification bodies, the establishment of mutual recognition mechanism with international and foreign authority certification. Mutual recognition of each other's certification is to eliminate technical barriers brought about by trade certification of common practice. For example, certification bodies outside the European Union through the Government and certification bodies to recognize each other's cooperation between the assessment of the agreement to obtain the European **** body awarded the "designated body" qualification, so that their own products in the domestic certification can be successfully entered into the unified market in Europe. Therefore, our country should actively carry out this work, improve the reputation of our products, save products in the repeated certification of the huge cost.
Further strengthen the ISO14001 environmental management system and the type of environmental labeling, safety, health standards and social responsibility standards, such as the construction of certification bodies to improve the certification body as an independent third-party certification of the main body of the service function, expand the scope of certification to improve the certification work at home and abroad to achieve mutual recognition of the international community, to provide a full range of services for the community, for the enterprise. At the same time, it is necessary to increase the configuration of technical equipment, strengthen the training of technical personnel, the formation of the establishment of green barriers to the technical team and technical capabilities.
4, the establishment of new trade barriers to the early warning mechanism. The establishment of new trade barriers to the early warning mechanism for the healthy development of China's foreign trade is of great significance, because the international standardization bodies and governments and their standardization bodies often revise their technical regulations and standards, if the enterprises do not have good information, can not be in accordance with the regulations or standards that have been changed in the requirements of the production of products in the export of barriers will be encountered. Therefore, it is recommended that the relevant government departments establish an early warning mechanism for new foreign trade barriers as soon as possible, in order to be responsible for collecting and tracking new foreign trade barrier measures, and to set up information centers and databases on new foreign trade barriers. At the same time, seriously study the impact of new trade barriers on China's major export products, and take active measures to deal with it, to create a favorable export environment. In obtaining information on new trade barriers abroad, we should make full use of the national consulting points on technical standards and regulations provided by WTO members under the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade and the Agreement on the Implementation of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. In addition, organizations such as the Economic and Commercial Counselor's Office in foreign countries can be used to collect timely information on foreign environmental technical barriers. The state provides relevant consulting services to enterprises by establishing relevant information databases and websites to facilitate their inquiries.
5, play the role of industry associations, import and export chambers of commerce and other intermediary organizations. Industry intermediary organizations should be in the information and intelligence support, organizing enterprises to respond to complaints and other aspects of the role of the government and enterprises can not be replaced, industry associations and other intermediary organizations should establish the concept of service for enterprises, and actively help enterprises to deal with new trade barriers.
6, strengthen the knowledge of new trade barriers to publicity, training and popularization. As most enterprises do not have sufficient knowledge of the new trade barriers, so should strengthen the new trade barriers to research and training of personnel to strengthen the new trade barriers to publicize the knowledge and training and popularization of the new trade barriers, so that export enterprises pay more and more attention to the new trade barriers and take measures in a timely manner to cope with the new trade barriers.
(2) enterprise countermeasures
1, export production enterprises should implement quality and sustainable development strategy. Enterprises should improve the level of technology, pay attention to environmental protection and the labor conditions of employees to improve the competitiveness of enterprises as a whole, and fundamentally break through the new trade barriers.
2, improve the level of enterprise management, the enterprise's organizational structure, strategic management and business management must be adapted to the requirements of the era of science and technology and environmental protection era. Enterprises can be ISO9000, ISO14000 and other management standards and the actual situation of the enterprise combined to create a suitable management methods for their own, from the system to ensure product quality and quality of environmental protection, so that in the international market in a favorable position to compete.
3, the enterprise should strive to improve the level of environmental protection, improve environmental protection investment, set up specialized environmental protection agencies and personnel, development of green products, strengthen green marketing, green management is the main conditions for enterprises to win environmental competitive advantage.
4, China's export products should actively apply for and obtain the export market needs of the environmental labeling, safety standards, health standards or social responsibility standards and other certifications. In particular, we should pay attention to the product certification requirements of trade object countries, according to the standards required by importers to provide products.
5, enterprises should pay attention to the industry technology, environmental protection and labor standards and other information collection and analysis work, early detection of problems and take timely and appropriate countermeasures.