After Washington unveiled its "reciprocal tariffs" on 2 April 2025, the year’s tariff war seized global headlines. Export tariffs jumped across the board, 10% for developed economies, 16% for developing ones, and 18% for least developed countries (LDCs). Yet focusing on tariffs alone understates the real cost of moving goods across borders. For roughly 88% of economies worldwide, the larger drag on exports comes from non-tariff measures (NTMs).
NTMs cover a wide range. At one end sit clearly restrictive non-tariff barriers (NTBs), import licensing, quotas, prohibitions and export bans. At the other end sit technical measures with far broader reach: sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures, and technical barriers to trade (TBT). Because these rules are framed around public health, product safety or environmental protection, they carry a degree of policy legitimacy that makes them harder to negotiate away than tariffs.
For exporters, this means market entry can require additional certification, retesting, relabelling, or even adjustments to production processes. None of these costs appear on a price quote, but they determine whether a firm clears the threshold for market access.
Higher tariffs, higher thresholds
For many exporters, NTMs constitute a compliance threshold layered beneath the tariff. When tariffs rise, price pressure simply stacks on top of existing compliance costs. Regional data from 2024 shows NTMs costs typically sat at or above effective tariff levels. However, after the 2025 US tariff hikes, the 2026 figures show export tariffs running higher than NTMs costs in several regions.
The shift is sharpest in Latin America and South Asia, where tariffs have overtaken NTMs costs — a sign that some developing regions are now carrying both burdens simultaneously. East Asia’s adjustment is less dramatic, but still significant: tariffs rose from 2.6% in 2024 to 4.5% in 2026, narrowing the gap with the 4.6% NTMs cost to almost nothing.
What this data points to is a structural asymmetry. Tariffs can be raised quickly and suspended just as quickly after political talks, NTMs tend to sink into the regulatory fabric. Once a standard is in place, it usually becomes a long-term condition of market access. For trade-dependent economies, tariff swings deliver short-term price shocks, but compliance thresholds shape long-term access to high-standard markets.
