Tariffs aren’t the biggest drag on global trade. Standards are
Product-safety and environmental rules have multiplied like an invasive species
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NOTHING has done more to juice global trade than a simple receptacle – about 12.2 metres in length and 2.4 m in breadth.
It is stuffed with cargo and hoisted onto lorries, trains, ships or planes with equal ease. The humble steel box, the standard shipping container, has done “more than all trade agreements in the past 50 years put together” to boost globalisation, The Economist has noted.
Today, globalisation is being pushed in the opposite direction. Ask for the reason, and many fingers will point at the increases in tariffs. But standards, not tariffs, are doing most of the pushing – and are the bigger threat to globalisation.
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