Why do different countries adopt different attitudes towards international trade

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Why do different countries adopt different attitudes towards international trade? Put simply, different countries adopt different attitudes towards international trade because, depending on their situation, countries can gain and loose from international trade. Most commonly a country’s attitude towards international trade is dictated by its strength or weaknesses in certain markets which will determine whether international trade will make that country richer or poorer in those markets. Historically countries attitudes towards international trade have also been affected by greater political factors beyond that of market economics usually taking the form of events such as war and ideological shifts and radicalisations. The more common and economically orientated explanation for country’s differing attitudes towards international trade is that certain countries gain or loose from trade in certain international markets. Most gains and losses of countries in international trade can be explained by looking at the differing factor endowments of countries. The basic principle of factor endowments in relation to international trade is that a country or group within a country that is trading a resource that is locally abundant to them in relation to the international market will gain from international trade as they do not have the burden of scarcity that other countries will have in relation to them. (Frieden, M. and Lake, D. 2000 p.318) This allows them essentially to behave as an economy of scale within that international market and therefore gain like any other economy of scale might. The inverse is true for countries or groups within countries that are trading a resource that is locally scarce to them in relation to the international market. R. Rogowski does well to explain this in terms of the Stolper-Samuelson theorem. ‘In almost any society, they showed,
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