First there's this:
The [Indonesian] government will soon ban sales of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) nationwide amid growing concerns over the product’s negative impact on people’s health.
Trade Minister Rachmat Gobel said on Monday that sales of e-cigarettes would be banned in line with the concerns recently voiced by the Health Ministry.
“It has been deemed that e-cigarettes pose health risks and that’s why we need to impose a ban,” he said.
There are no domestic e-cigarette producers. Consumers rely on imports from China, the inventor of the device that can stimulate the sensation of smoking.
When the domestic ban took effect, it would automatically halt the import of e-cigarettes, Rachmat further said.
...
“E-cigarettes also often turn a beginner smoker into an active smoker,” Roy said in a text message.
The Trade Ministry’s director general for standards and consumer protection, Widodo, shared a similar view, saying that a ban on sales of e-cigarettes would be necessary to protect the health of consumers from a number of dangerous substances added to the products. He further said that his office was finalizing a ministerial regulation to ensure the ban was effective.
Indonesia is famous for its clove cigarette industry, and it's not hard to see how a ban on e-cigarettes -- which are not produced domestically -- would be seen as protectionist.
Then there's this:
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sent a letter to U.S. International Trade Commission Chairman Meredith Broadbent on Monday, requesting the government adopt statistical reporting numbers for imports of electronic cigarettes.
The Senate Finance Committee ranking member made the request in response to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, which looked at the e-cigarette market and rise in imports over the past year.
Wyden said new reporting data would provide insights into the source, value, and volume of e-cigarette imports into the U.S. and tariff revenue collected on these products.
“E-cigarettes represent a fast growing, multi-billion dollar market and yet we know very little about how much is coming into our country, who is manufacturing the product, or the ultimate public health implications of these unregulated products,” Wyden said.
“With use among middle and high school students tripling in the past year alone, it’s time we collect baseline information on e-cigarette imports that will help us most effectively consider and propose regulatory options.”
The report highlights how.the U.S. market for e-cigarettes was roughly $2.5 billion in 2014, with approximately 90% of these products coming from China
The GAO report is here. It says:
Although there are no definitive data to assess the relative proportions of imported and domestically manufactured e-cigarettes, industry experts and researchers told us that the majority of e-cigarettes sold in the United States are imported. Some estimates from industry experts we interviewed suggest that up to 90 percent of e-cigarette devices and closed-system e-cigarettes are imported from China. In addition, industry experts and researchers estimated that most e-cigarette liquid on the U.S. market is either imported or mixed in the United States with at least some ingredients from other countries, such as China, France, India, and Switzerland.
I'm not sure where they are going with this, but with such a high percentage of the product coming from China, it's not hard to see how protectionist sentiment might creep in to policy-making.
