Free trade

From RationalWiki
(Redirected from Free Trade)
Jump to: navigation, search
The dismal "science"

Economics

link=:category:
Key concepts

  $ Economics
  $ Capitalism
  $ Communism
  $ Socialism

More about economics
Notable economists

Free trade is an economic practice in which two or more countries agree to enforce few or no barriers to trade, such as quotas or tariffs, upon the exchange of goods and services between the countries. The concept is central to classical liberalism, especially international classical liberalism, whose proponents believe that free trade naturally leads to free cultural exchange and the free exchange of ideas for the populations involved. For many modern international relations-minded classical liberals, free trade also promotes peace because it intensifies interdependence in addition to cultural exchange. For this reason and others, free trade forms a significant portion of the backbone of the European Union and European cooperation institutions more broadly.

Opposition to free trade can come from many different political stances. Economic nationalists and mercantilists dislike free trade because they see it as threatening to national sovereignty. International relations realists and neo-mercantilists dislike it because they see it as an obstacle to national security. Reactionaries dislike it because they fear the possibility of cultural exchange and/or increased immigration. Some conservatives dislike it if it increases their country's net capital outflow. Some progressives dislike it because they see it as harmful to the domestic economy and/or the environment. Leftists dislike it because they see it as advantageous, both in terms of economics and power, to the elites and disadvantageous to everyone else; they prefer working/middle class internationalism to capitalist internationalism.

[edit] What free trade is not

"Free trade" is often used as a guise for two or more countries' governments to impose really bad economic, social, and environmental policy upon their respective populations through treaties having nothing to do with actual free trade. The most obvious example of this in North America is NAFTA. Present threats of this nature, which all happen to be more global in scope, include the Trans-Pacific Partnership[1][2], the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership[citation needed], and the Trade in Services Agreement[3], all of which are currently being negotiated in secret, including their content.

Free trade is also not to be confused with fair trade, which can be basically defined as international trade that is at the very least not detrimental to all stakeholders involved at every stage of the trading process.

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. Leaked TPP chapter on the environment
  2. Leaked TPP chapter on "intellectual property"
  3. Draft of TISA leaked to Wikileaks
Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Community
Tools
support