non-tariff barrier

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

any government policy or regulation other than a tariff that restricts imports or distorts international trade flows, including import quotas, sanitary and phytosanitary standards, technical barriers to trade, customs procedures, subsidies, local content requirements, and anti-dumping measures; non-tariff barriers have grown in relative importance as average tariff rates have declined through successive rounds of multilateral trade negotiations, and they now represent one of the central challenges of trade diplomacy; because many non-tariff barriers take the form of domestic regulatory standards — food safety rules, product labelling requirements, environmental regulations — their negotiation raises sensitive questions about the boundary between legitimate policy and protectionism