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Please do not copy/paste from wikipedia, I've already looked there but still didn't really understand it completely.

2006-12-30 09:59:36 · 3 answers · asked by Anonymous in Social Science Economics

3 answers

There is no such thing as 'fair trade'.
There is only 'free trade' and 'politician controlled trade'.

'Fair trade' is a made up politicians' phrase used when they are attempting to secure the votes of small numbers of people in certain industries. They claim that
1-restricting imports(imposing quotas) and/or
2-imposing tariffs and/or
3-subsidizing industries
protect American industries/jobs. In reality, it only causes consumers to pay higher prices.

The small number of "jobs saved" is greatly offset by forcing the other 200,000,000+ citizens pay higher prices for goods. It also restricts liberty by not allowing Americans to trade with whom they please.

These policies (quotas, tariffs, subsidies) also anger other nations because they want to sell us their goods. They could respond by imposing their own quotas/tariffs against our goods(which hurts US exports). Or, in the case of Africa, it just keeps them poor because African farmers are not able to sell their crops to 300,000,000 Americans.
.
Here's an article about trade restriction and subsidies in the agriculture industry you may like.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/36207.html
.

2006-12-30 12:26:17 · answer #1 · answered by Zak 5 · 1 0

Fair Trade is not possible because traiffs are good for the local producers, but they diminished the quality of goods made and the comsumer pays higher prices. It depends on the country at large your a poor country cheating will be option if IMF making it hard to build instructure to help your people. Import subsitution will stimulate growth to the point to build basic industries, but the downside is when you try to make higher end goods. Higher end goods need know how and technology transfters of knowledge ,so the only legal way is to open the economy or have a domestic producer buy western company with the know how. The reality is not many countries will go back to communism, but that doesnt mean they will open up the economies if politcal instability would result from job losses. Subidies is more than anything wrecks trade because it plays favorites and leads to cronyism is a big problem. America benefit more by cutting farm subsidies because most of the those go to corporate farmers that really dont need that benefit since there farms are mechanized, and they used biotechnology for good crop yields. Transfer of argriculutral bio-crop know how would help the poorest the most, and provide all lower crop prices. When traiffs and subidies are used then it becomes not fair trade it becomes rigged trade, and rigged trade deals need 20,000 pages of bylaws, and freetrade should be all of goods, and services not just capital and money flows.

2006-12-31 14:43:05 · answer #2 · answered by ram456456 5 · 0 0

ok, properly, in economics, exertions is a commodity. the fee of your exertions -- the wages you're making -- rely on grant and demand -- on condition that employers will hire the main inexpensive individual who can do the job they choose finished. So what happens in case you flood the marketplace with a commodity? Double the quantity of toothbrushes, say? Economics says that the fee of toothbrushes will pass down till equilibrium is reached. an analogous factor is actual of exertions, additionally a commodity. Double the style of dentists, say, and the wages of dentists will pass down. That i think of is strictly what happens as quickly as we've unfastened commerce with 0.33 worldwide international places. it isn't the finished image, even nonetheless it incredibly is a crucial area of it. And it impacts you. the fee of the products you purchase is going down, with the aid of fact they are actually being made by employing decrease salary workers. yet once you're unskilled, the fee of your exertions additionally is going down, on condition that there are actually greater unskilled workers in the exertions pool. This pushes down expenditures, and it pushes down wages. And whilst wages get pushed down, we get a melancholy, with the aid of fact call for is going down. So government counteracts that tendency in direction of low call for and financial melancholy by employing printing money, lending it to banks, borrowing the money from the banks (do no longer ask), and spending it. and that's exceptionally lots our cutting-edge undertaking in a nutshell -- much less costly products, downward rigidity on wages, government printing and borrowing distinctive money to maintain us out of a melancholy.

2016-10-06 05:40:25 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

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