Question

Choose an issue related to global trade and discuss it in detail. Who is affected? How is it monitored/managed? What are the implications for the future? Defend your answer.

Answer 1

• Trade issues occasionally dominate and are a continuing theme of the international scene: the global market, sweatshops, child labor, trade deficits, the euro, sanctions, tariffs etc. Depending on the sector, the country, the markets and the prevailing policies, trade and trade liberalization may be good or bad for the environment and development.
• Global Trade, in the absence of proper pricing, is leading to environmental degradation.Everybody is getting affected by it,the world's population.Increasing prices and diminishing quality of products is adversely affecting the general public around the world.
• International trade allows the scale of this inefficiency to be magnified beyond what it would be in a closed, domestic setting. The fewer environmental costs borne by a producer, the cheaper the final product, and the more of them demanded by a global market - particularly if foreign competitors are made to pay the full environmental costs of production.This has generated 'pollution havens', where pollution-intensive manufacturing processes have congregated in countries or regions that charge the lowest environmental costs.
• For example,It is easy to see how a simple label can have enormous trade impacts. Consider the fate of a consumer food product from Canada that, in conformity with new EU regulations on labeling, advertises itself as possibly containing genetically modified organisms. This is likely to depress the demand for such products.Labeling carries opportunities as well as threats. The more legitimacy a label has, the more powerful a market tool it becomes. This is important for firms seeking to exploit green niche markets abroad.
  
• Businesses need to know what is happening in world trade talks, and how it could affect their interests. Armed with the knowledge of what is being negotiated and how it affects them, firms need to strongly insinuate themselves into the policy process at the national level. They need to let the national negotiators know what they should be pushing for, and what they should be defending against.
• As well as a secure system of trade rules, business needs a secure and stable political environment if it is to thrive.We are coming increasingly to recognize that gross global inequities are not sustainable. They may be related to migration, disease, political instability, environmental degradation, or even a lack of export markets for our goods and services. In a world where the forces of globalization are making us ever closer neighbours, our neighbours' well being is ever more our concern.