Would it not make sense for your average unintersting country X to instead of, for example, approving pharmaceuticals just say that if they’re licenced in Europe or the US then that’ll do, they’re safe to sell in country X. Or instead of approving cars or planes, just say that if they’re for sale in the US or Europe they’re almost certainly safe enough, so they’re fine in country X. Same for electronic equipment and so on and so on.
There is a certain sense I suppose that country X would be giving up part of its soverignty here, but on the other the cost savings could be huge and it would also presumably lead to cheaper imports for X, as exporters would not have any hassle having their products approved for country X - if they’re fine in Europe they’re fine in X.
Presumably in fact this happens already - but should it happen an awful lot more? I don’t really see for example why if a drug is safe in Europe it won’t be safe in the US (on average) and vice versa. And yes, I know about thalidomide…
Look at the history of Vioxx. Leaving the issue of falsified studies ( :eek: ) for a moment, who makes the call on balancing the risk of increased risk of cardiac problems vs. the reduced risk of gastrointestinal problems?
I think this is very common for driver’s licenses and vehicle registration for tourists or other foreigners in the country temporarily. Afaik it’s perfectly legal for a Canadian tourist to drive in New York with a Quebec driver’s license. New York assumes that the requirements for getting a Quebec license are sufficiently close to the requirements for getting a New York one that letting Quebeckers drive on NY roads once in a while isn’t going to be a major public safety issue.
I believe this is also true for financial reporting. I’m pretty sure that for some countries, if a company’s financial reporting meets the SEC’s standards, that is deemed acceptable for trading in their country as well even if they have explicit other standards.
I understand that the Israeli pharmaceutical authorities pretty much defer to the FDA - they may not exactly rubber-stamp any drug accepted by the U.S., but they definitely take the American ruling into account. It’s mostly a matter of resources. A small country simply doesn’t have the money and time to perform the all of the exhaustive testing, and is perfectly satisfied with piggybacking on the decisions of larger ones.
California has tighter restrictions on many things, especially pollution standards. But for many products, it isn’t worth the effort to produce 2 versions of the product, so all of them meet the tighter California requirements.
I once worked on a project for a new line of insurance. One of the requirements was that all of the forms couldn’t have print smaller than a certain size – because that was required by the state of New York. So the forms used nationwide were designed to meet the tight New York requirements.
Much of the milk you buy will say something like "Approved by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Agriculture, even when you are a whole long way away from Pennsylvania – because they have strict standards for dairy products, and the company uses those all over.
What about the domestic sellers of cars and planes? Why would they agree to this?
The best known case for this, that of how Mercedes single handedly made private import of foreign cars to the US illegal in 1988,
doesn’t even involve a significant American carmaker, the lobbying pressure from the American Mercedes dealers was enough.
There’s was a recent article in The Economist about how average people in developed countries vastly over-estimate how integrated and free their markets are. The truth is that your life sucks because rent seeking cartels are everywhere. The Anglo Saxon world is better than most but still far from perfect.
While I will grant those examples, note that the opposite is much more common, the regulatory race to the bottom, which occurs when it is argued that if something is legal for sale in one place it should be so everywhere. Regulators are vary of this and for this reason while it may not exactly hurt your chances of getting approval in the US if you can show that something is already permitted in Europe (or indeed vice versa) it’s not going to guarantee it.
In addition to the risks to Country B if Country A doesn’t do its due diligence very well, there’s also the argument that industries in Country B are at a competitive disadvantage if they can’t market a product until industries in Country A have marketed it first.
The international recognition of driver’s licenses is governed by the Geneva Convention (1949) on Road Traffic. Some signatory states allow you to simply exchange your driver’s license when you move internationally - no written or road test required.
Our regulations in Cayman frequently adopt, or at least defer to, the requirements of other jurisdictions. That includes everything from drug regulations to medical licensing of doctors.