Ethical Issues In Free Trade

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1. Define free trade. Is free trade fair? Discuss. Free trade is when a government places no restrictions on what goods and products it's citizens import and export beyond their bordering country boundries. The text explains how beneficial unrestricted free trade can be for a country's growth, stability. According to our text a country should export products that are high is resource and low cost to make in abundance while importing goods not readily available or moderately available in it's own country. This theoretically makes for a higher GDP and for corporations to make higher revenues. So, these are the supposed facts but I see things a little differently. I have no problem with free trade as exporting what you are high in and importing what you are low in makes sense. The problem lies with in the ethical means of how this is being achieved. How far are we willing to go just to save a buck or two? With the enabled NAFTA in place U.S. corporations have been moving production outside U.S. borders to save money on labor cost. The book points out how this contributes to a higher GDP…show more content…
A government should take in to consideration whether a country uses child labor or limits it's people to very low and unfair wages to the point that they live in poverty. China is one known for using child labor as well as unpaid prisoner labor. Using prisoners for free labor or child labor for next to nothing creates an unfair competition to regular workers. Not only does this create an unfair competition, it also breaks ethical codes by unjustly using children for labor. This is not only unethical but cruel and governments who partake in these types of laboring practices should not be granted preferential trading rights. I myself as a consumer would rather spend a little more money for a product than encourage unethical or even inhuman business

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