Transparency and regulatory cooperation on international trade for medical products to tackle COVID-19: An assessment of the WTO institutional role and the Brazilian notifications under the TBT and SPS Agreements

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply challenged all national states in their ability to formulate public policies efficiently and timely. Among them include the aim of guaranteeing access to medicines, personal protection equipment (EPI) and medical products in general, national or imported. Foreign trade policies give support to urgent sanitary and economic domestic policies and require articulation with the international sphere. This article assesses the relationship between international trade regulation under the GATT/OMC system and the responses provided by member states related to the import, export and trade on medical products. It aimed at analyzing the relevance and efficiency of the WTO in its institutional functions, and the practices of its technical committees TBT and SPS to guarantee transparency and provide opportunity for regulatory cooperation among member-countries. In order to test the hypothesis, we provide a case study on the Brazilian trade policies and trade-related administrative measures from the executive power and regulatory bodies related to the COVID-19, and notified to the WTO in the period from March to July 2020. Data collected were analyzed in light of the agreements and the institutional structure of the trading multilateral system and the literature on International Economic Law. The study demonstrates that the interaction between regulation and practices developed in the multilateral system with the Brazilian domestic institutional structures may have positively influenced effective foreign trade policies and administrative trade-related measures taken during the health crisis, in the period under analysis. © 2021 Centro Universitario de Brasilia. All rights reserved.