Varied policies across EU, non-market practices barriers for US: USTR

The report highlights cross-cutting barriers affecting US agricultural trade, including opaque and burdensome facility registration requirements and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures that are not based on science, are maintained without sufficient scientific evidence, or are applied beyond the extent necessary to address SPS issues.

US stakeholders continue to face challenges in the EU in having to address disparate policies or procedures across member states. Areas of concern include customs, labeling, agricultural biotechnology, packaging and packing waste, government procurement, investment and intellectual property protection and enforcement, an USTR release noted.

China’s state-led, non-market approach to the economy and trade continues to shape the industrial policies that the country pursues, and provide unfair competitive advantages to Chinese companies, the report said.

This includes massive financial support and regulatory and other preferences and formal and informal policies and practices that seek to disadvantage foreign competitors. This behaviour is heavily distorting and disrupting markets, which has led to severe and persistent excess capacity, observed the report.

In several industrial sectors, including manufacturing, China is setting and pursuing production and market share targets that can only be achieved through non-market means, the report said.

The United States is aware that data localisation policies can be used by governments to surveil their populations, interfere with labour rights, and otherwise compromise civil and political liberties, and has identified problematic data policies across a range of countries, including China and Russia.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)