The Pros And Cons Of Free Trade

The act of opening up economies is known as "free trade". It will generally benefit the larger wealthier countries whose big companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Nike are looking to expand and sell their goods worldwide. In the one sector where developing countries have the most to gain such as agricultural goods the wealthier countries will maintain the highest level of protection of their own markets. Free trade will bring down trade barriers such as tariffs, tariffs are a tax imposed on imported goods and services. They are used to restrict trade between countries as they increase the price of imported goods and services making them more expensive to consumers. A specific tariff is levied as a fixed fee based on the type of item for example

As companies fail to include these environmental costs in the price of goods trying to compete with companies operating under weaker environmental legislation in some of the countries. The increase of corporate farms in developing countries has reported increases in pesticide and energy use and these host countries for example the coffee giants Nestlé have huge corporate coffee farms all over Colombia ignore costly environmental standards. (Castellanos, 2013) .The World Trade Organisation is heavily criticised for not allowing barriers to imports based on poor environmental standards in countries where goods are produced. They allow for this in the developed countries however contradicting themselves by permitting a U.S. ban on shrimp imports in the 1990’s because the fishing methods threatened endangered sea turtles outside U.S. borders. It seems to work one way for the poor countries and another for the rich. It is quite clear that free trade benefits the consumer as prices of goods are lower due to cheaper imports without taxes on them. But it threatens on forms of local home grown business be it agriculture, clothing or technological and in these poor countries locals are forced out of their jobs due to the unwanted corporate