MDCP Middle East Trade Barrier Success

Long-Term Engagement and Education Effort Help Keep Gulf Markets Open

A country’s building codes and standards may be written so as to exclude perfectly suitable building materials from being incorporated into a project. Through the five-year Market Development Cooperator (MDCP) project, ASTM and ICC acted to ensure that codes and standards being adopted in the six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council are market-relevant, science-based, and internationally recognized. Codes and standards that do not meet these criteria may force unnecessary and costly product redesigns or allow low-quality products to compete unfairly with higher-quality U.S. products.

Select MDCP project work from late 2014 to late 2019 and outcomes by ASTM and ICC are highlighted below. Increased understanding and uptake of U.S.-developed international standards and model building codes in the Gulf have real effect. As ASTM notes, they “ease market access for U.S. construction products and services and increase U.S. export competitiveness.”