Evaluating The Effect Of Non-Tariff Measures On Agriculture Export - A Case Study Of Vietnam’s Exports To The European Union

Abstract

In this paper, we estimate the impact of non-tariff measures (NTMs) imposed by the EU on agricultural exports of Vietnam, focusing on two of the most practical measures, technical barriers to trade (TBT) and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures. Estimates were carried out for three groups of agricultural products (HS08, HS09, and HS10) at the 4-digit level of the Harmonized System using panel data from 2001 to 2020 in a gravity setting. The results show that SPS and TBT imposed by the EU have a positive and statistically significant effect on Vietnam’s export of agricultural products. In which SPS has more impact than TBT measures. Each additional SPS measure applied by the EU will increase Vietnam's agricultural exports by 1.24%, while each extra TBT measure used by the EU will boost Vietnam's agricultural exports by 2.34%. On the product dimension, the export of product HS08 is positively affected when introducing a new SPS measure, and HS09 is positively affected when introducing a new TBT measure. The estimated results show that NTM has no statistically significant impact on the export of agricultural products with the code HS07. In the long term, NTMs do not affect Vietnam's agricultural exports.