Non tariff measures (NTMs) are becoming increasingly worrisome for New Zealand exporters. Our firms know these NTMs impose considerable costs, reduce trade volumes and eat into margins posts John Ballingall, Deputy Chief Executive, NZ Institute for Economic Research (NZIER) on TradeWorks. NTMs are regulatory tools, other than standard border tariffs, that can have potential economic effects on trade – either a decrease in quantities traded, an increase in their price, or some combination of both. Common examples are quotas, technical standards (TBT), registration processes, labelling, sanitary and phyto-sanitary (SPS) measures and biosecurity procedures. NZIER wanted to estimate just how serious…