Trade Therapy: Deepening Cooperation to Strengthen Pandemic Defenses
Restrictions and prohibitions. Quantitative restrictions on imports and exports of medical goods include nonautomatic licensing requirements, outright prohibitions, and qualified prohibitions. Quantitative restrictions can take many forms, but in the case of medical goods they typically consist of nonautomatic licensing requirements (50 percent of all notified measures) and full prohibitions (19 percent), followed by other types of restrictions, such as prohibitions except under specific conditions (31 percent).2 World Trade Organization (WTO) member economies use these measures to ensure that medical goods meet specific safety, quality, and efficacy standards and do not pose any risk to human, animal, and plant life or health. In 2018–19, prohibitions and restrictions on both exports and imports most heavily affected pharmaceutical products, PPE, and other medical supplies such as syringes, needles, disinfectants, and oxygen (figure 2.2). Import and export licensing procedures vary significantly by economy.
Upper-middleincome
Import
Lower-middleincome
Figure 2.2 WTO-notified quantitative restrictions, by type and member income group, 2018–19
Import
High-income
64
Import
Export
Export
Export
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
Number of notified restrictions Prohibition
Other restrictions
Licensing
Source: World Trade Organization (WTO) Quantitative Restrictions Database. Note: Only about 50 percent of WTO members submit quantitative restrictions notifications, with many least developed countries and other low- and middle-income members missing. For more information, see the Quantitative Restrictions Database: https://qr.wto.org/en#/home. The income categories of WTO member economies are according to World Bank classifications.
