Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) by the WTO’s Membership : Profiling and Decoding the Commercial vs. Economic Interests

The paper brings out the pattern of notification of TBT measures under the WTO. While, using the WTO grouping of countries does put the developing countries, who are usually adopting international standards, as the largest yearly notifier since 2004. The pattern takes a completely different turn when the notifier is mapped to two other well-established grouping categories like the World Banks Income-based grouping and the U/NIDO's industrial competitiveness index (CIP). We come to the understanding that the high-income and industrially most advanced countries are the largest notifiers at the WTO. This will have serious implication if the international trade policies are based on a wrong premise, that the developing countries are the most significant creators of global trade barriers. It is undoubtedly to impact the innovations and technological developments in the region as the only trade barrier tariff will be significantly decreased while the actual creators of trade barrier continue to escape as we do not identify them