Should Canada, or the States, do business with countries with poor human rights?

Question

Explain

Answer 1

I don't think Canada and other countries should do business with the States and their human rights issues.

Why should we support a country that is at war? Why should we support a country that doesn't play fair with trade anyway? Why should we buy cars that fall apart? Why should we support a country that doesn't take care of it's citizens (health care, Katrina, homeless)?

I think it would be a good show of solidarity to just stop trading with the U.S. altogether, at least until they get a new president and change their foreign policy considerably.

Thanks for asking.

Answer 2

No, morally and ethically speaking, they should not. However, their reality is that it used to be benefical for them to do business with these countries due to cost savings, however, now they have just become dependent on these countries to supply cheap goods and their economies depend on the cheap goods for huge profits across the board for the big corporations. Imagine if Walmart suddenly stopped doing business with china, well, they would have to go else where to get the same goods and now the price of goods would go up since most other countries that do not violate human rights to the same extent will charge more, therefore Walmart would need to jack up the sales prices to keep up the profits, but the end result is the demand would lessen since people would not be willing to pay higher prices, and so their sales will decrease bringing down their stock price. Now imagine if this happened to all the Fortune 1000 companies? The economy on the whole would be impacted negatively and a domino effect would take place across world markets, and there would be a recession most likely.

Answer 3

Canada and the US must not trade with countries with human rights violations because it is against the principles of democracy for which countries must not tolerate.