Free Trade does not mean Fair Trade! .
The key priorities of any International regime in agricultural policy must be to promote food and livelihood security and encourage sustainable production.
Researching this area I learned the significance of Trade in . .
Here are some .statistics I came across during my research.
Trade can be a way of overcoming local and regional scarcity and can generate new livelihood and employment opportunities. Already 49 of the poorest countries earn 8 times more from trade than they receive in aid. They also depend on International trade much more than the richer countries do. However the potential benefits of Trade are passing the poor countries because the current International rules are biased in favor of the richest countries and companies.
Trade Liberalization has made it harder for millions of small farmers around the world to sell their products. Instead of competing with farmers in the next village the next valley or even the next town country they are now competing with some of the richest and most heavily subsidized farmers in the world, The majority of the world's small farmers depend on agriculture for their survival. If they don't sell what they produce they can't buy goods or afford to send their children to school or pay for healthcare. In most cases farmers in the majority world receive little or no government aid. By contrast a tiny number of farmers in developed countries receive huge amounts of government support. $318 billion in 2003 alone of which 80% went to 20% of the richest farmers.
Despite much in the way of promises rich countries have proved themselves Incapable of weaning farmers off subsidies. Instead they have increased steadily since 1950's .Even if they were dropped Western farmers would still have advantages of support over the years.
Over decades of structural adjustments IMF and World Bank designed programmes. This led to dismantling of tariffs and opening of markets to Imports.
So, the starting point of this effort is to define "trade liberalisation". What is trade liberalisation? ... Underlying the trade liberalisation process is the economic principle of comparative advantage. ... Hence, trade liberalisation increases imports as well as exports. ... Post war trade liberalisation has brought important benefits. ...
Trade liberalisation carries real economic challenges for small Pacific Island countries (PICs). ... Free trade is a system of trade policy that allows traders to act and to transact without the interference from government. ... Free trade differs from the other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services amongst trading countries are determined by artificial prices that may or may not reflect the true nature of supply and demand. ... The Pacific Island Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA) is the first FTA established under PACER. ... At this time the industry was protected a...
This increasing integration has been due to the liberalisation of markets, rapid technological progress and major advances in telecommunications, which has created new investment and financing opportunities for businesses and people around the world. ... Against the regulation of international financial markets Following the Asian Financial crisis, the international financial institutions put the blame on capitalist policies rather than the liberalisation of capital movements. ... The main reason why this crisis was instigated was because countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and the Philipp...
For example, the long term tendency towards freer trade, electronic commerce and the seemingly uncontrollable power of deregulated capital markets do much to enhance the power of markets and create a sense of the economic irrelevance of national borders. ... In such a context part of the problem with understanding globalisation is the nature of the populist, sometime hysterical, discourse on the subject to be found not only in the media but also in a range of so-called scholarly texts that reduce 'globalisation' to a set of slogans to be either exhorted or demonised.1 Throughout ...
The effort to remove barriers to trade and investment has been a critical contributor to this region's economic growth. Trade and investment liberalisation - and greater integration into regional and global economic affairs - are very much in China's and Hong Kong's interests, and in the interests of Australia and other countries. ... At the regional level, we have already seen tremendous reductions in trade barriers, partly under the auspices of APEC. ... ASEAN, in particular, has cut applied tariffs on a trade-weighted basis by two-thirds and most recently Indonesia has announ...
Then, the liberalization and opening of trade across borders led to the globalisation. ... Free market was linked to neo-liberalism, which advocates liberalisation and less power of the State, free trade, and reduce tariffs barriers... ... Many people are against globalisation and the increase of liberalisation but in fact we have to clarify that showing that globalisation is responsible of widening the gap between rich and poor countries will depends on the way you count poverty. ... The notion that trade and economic growth aggravate poverty is unfounded, "conversely, restrictive trade polic...
- Political Shifts: The last two decades have witnessed a change in ideology to privatisation, economic liberalisation, which make societies more open to the world... Whereas the GATT focussed mainly on trade in goods; the WTO covers trade in goods, trade in services, investments, the regulation of international property rights. ... Free Trade and Trade Liberalization The act of opening up economies is known as "free trade" or "trade liberalisation". ... Trade liberalization means opening up markets by bringing down trade barriers such as tariffs. ... Trade is not always equal. ...
Since the World Trade Organization was started in 1995, it has been given the responsibility of liberalizing and managing the international trading system. ... New areas of trade were brought into account, reflecting on how trade has been achieved throughout the past few decades. Trade in services and in agricultural products was now subject to the liberalization efforts of the WTO. ... Trade liberalization under GATT has been incorporated into international trading relations since 1947. ... Indeed, the liberalization of international trade carried out by the WTO fosters EU's interest...
Economic liberalisation in Russia was initiated by Boris Yeltsin who was given special power by the Russian parliament to carry out reforms by decree. ... Privatisation and liberalisation are the two key elements of Russia's experience that significantly differ to China's. ... In contrast to China's cautious way of economic liberalisation, the Russians removed price control and tightened monetary in one go. ... On the eve of economic liberalisation in China, there were existence of a large number of underground family workshops and black market (Liu, 1992). ... This enabled the ...