During a discussion in the European Parliament, the European Central Bank president referenced a 2024 International Monetary Fund report that found that intra-EU barriers to trade amount to a 44% tariff on goods and a 110% duty on services – far above the punishing levies that US President Donald Trump has slapped on EU exporters over the last year.
While it’s very fair to point out that non-tariff barriers to trade are a real and consequential thing, and that they probably throttle trade in the EU, it’s also not really an apples-to-apples comparison to compare intra-EU NTBs to US tariff-only barriers, as the US will also have its own NTBs.
My understanding is that NTBs became the more-substantial form of barrier quite some time back. They’re harder to crack down on (e.g. is a food standard in place because there’s actual concern about sanitary concerns or is it actually there to create protectionist policy? Advocates of it will swear the former).
It’s not a matter of unregulating trade, but rather a matter of harmonizing regulations. An idea I’ve been playing with in my head is having Mad Libs type of laws at the EU level, where there is a common framework, but the smaller details become country specific
