Tag: trade
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Fair Trade and Development
Fair Trade is where companies and consumers pay more than the free-market rate for products to ensure that workers receive a decent wage for their products. Typically this involves consumers in developed countries paying a higher price for agricultural products such as coffee, chocolate and bananas to the workers in developing countries. The Fair Trade…
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How Europe’s Agricultural Polices Hurt Africa
International trade policies seem to benefit large scale industrial farmers in Europe and hurt smaller scale farmers in Africa. This is according to a recent 2018 DW documentary which focuses on how Industrial technology, large scale industrial production and European Union Subsidies make EU agricultural products much cheaper than locally produced African agricultural products, despite…
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Global Value Chains and Globalisation
The 2019 World Bank Development Report highlights the importance of ‘global value chains’ to helping poor countries develop. Global trade has increased significantly since the 1990s and global value chains today account for more than 50% of global trade. Those countries which have high levels of participation with Global Value Chains have generally developed more…
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The US-UK Trade Deal: More Neoliberalism?
Brexit hasn’t been in the news much since Covid-19, but we’re still leaving the European Union in January 2020, which means we haven’t got long to get some trade-deals in place with several different countries. The United States is one of the UK’s largest trade partners, with around $250 of trade between the countries every…
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What is Economic Globalisation?
Economic Globalisation involves the global expansion of international capitalism, free markets and the increase in international trade, a process which has accelerated since the 1950s. Nearly every country on earth now imports and exports more from and to other countries than it did immediately after World War Two, and even ex-communist countries are now part…
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Outline and explain two reasons why trade does not always promote development (10)
One reason is that poorer countries tend to export low-value primary products such as agricultural goods, while richer countries export higher value goods. Frank (1971) argues this is a legacy of colonialism during which rich countries made their colonies specialize in exporting one primary product such as sugar or cotton back to the ‘mother land’.…
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Arguments for Trade as a Strategy for Development
‘Free’ trade* refers to the relative absence of government interference in the affairs of private businesses and the consumers who buy their products. Free trade depends on free trade agreements. Free Trade agreements are policies established between countries and private businesses which make it relatively easy for companies to produce and sell goods in more than…
