Regulatory Cooperation: Lessons from the WTO and the World Trade Regime

Trade friction today is largely due to regulatory diversity as contemporary markets are chiefly segmented through non-tariff barriers. The purpose of the paper is to enquire into regulatory cooperation and coherence in the context of the world trade regime. It examines the challenges arising from regulatory diversity and considers mechanisms and approaches that could be taken to reduce regulatory barriers and costs to trade. Following an assessment of how countries are currently pursuing regulatory cooperation in the context of preferential, plurilateral and multilateral initiatives, with the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade and the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures under the aegis of the WTO adopted as the baseline, a set of options for policies and international trade rules that will enhance regulatory cooperation are put forward.