Study On Economic Effects Of Technical Barrier To Trade System Of Eastern Africa Community

East African Community?EAC?is a regional intergovernmental organization and customs union of 5 partner states:the Republics of Burundi,Kenya,Rwanda,the United Republic of Tanzania,and the Republic of Uganda.According to the latest annual report of Committee on Technical Barrier to Trade under World Trade Organization,among the top 10 countries in terms of new notification number of technical barrier to trade?abbreviated as TBT thereafter?in 2018,4 countries are member states of EAC:Uganda(1^st rank with 413 notifications),Kenya(3^rd rank with173 notifications),Rwanda(6^th rank with 137 notifications)and Tanzania(8^th rank with 110 notifications).However,as traditionally leading countries for TBT notifications,United States of America?276 notifications?and European Union?115notifications?only rank 2^nd and 7^th respectively.The recent development of TBT systems of EAC presents paradox to the mainstream idea in 2 perspectives:on the one hand,the surge in TBT notifications occurs with increase of trade while most of studies in the domain of TBT argue that TBT plays restrictive role in trade;on the other hand,EAC,as the least developed economy in the world with the lowest technical level,establishes such huge system of TBT.These two paradoxes embody the dialectical unity behind the contradictory economic effects of TBT system.As for either labor intensive industries,capital intensive industries or technology intensive industries,TBT system tends to play restrictive or promotive role under diversified conditions.In case of developing economies like EAC,to realize the maximum interest in trade by means of TBT system is the united principle and logic behind the complicated TBT measures that present contradictory appearances.At the beginning,the paper settles the definition of TBT on the basis of which the relevant literature is reviewed in retrospective manner in order to conclude 3 main hypotheses as guidelines for further evaluation through classical equilibrium models and empirical analyses of gravity model.The results of empirical assessment ascertain that TBT plays promotive role in trade of labor intensive products and natural resource intensive products under some condition;TBT can indirectly improve FDI stock of EAC thereby ameliorating trade of capital intensive products;for technology intensive products TBT can specifically promote the trade of some products exactly according to EAC's industry strategy.Finally,the paper endeavors to clarify the principles of reasonable TBT system and put forward some advice regarding the establishment of Chinese TBT system under the multilateral negotiation framework of WTO agreement on TBT.