Standards and Competitiveness
The Office of Standards and Investment Policy Standards Team leads ITA in standards-related policy issues including those related to the standards development process, barriers to market access, and capacity building, and serves as the liaison to the American National Standards Institute, Standards Development Organizations, and DOC's National Institute of Standards and Technology. Areas of coverage include:
In working towards ITA's mission, OSIP actively engages private sector stakeholders - including individual companies, industry and trade associations, and standards developing organizations - as well as pertinent U.S. government agencies and foreign regulators.
Standards News and Helpful Links
Notify U.S. is a free, web-based information service designed to disseminate World Trade Organization Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (WTO TBT) notifications. It features e-mail notifications of changes to domestic and foreign technical regulations for industrial products (including product packaging, marking and labeling) and offers complete texts of proposed regulations for review and comment.
Standards Alert is a new service from OSIP in cooperation with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the private sector coordinator of the U.S. Standards system. Through Standards Alert, OSIP and ANSI want to make sure that all ITA units and ITA clients know about opportunities to participate in standards development in organizations such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). U.S. company participation is key to making sure that standards do not become trade barriers when incorporated into regulations by U.S. trading partners.