The majority of the US food supply will be produced here because we can produce many types of food efficently. However the types of food that we don't have a comparative advantage in growing should be importted. Its not just bananas but also sugar. American coprorarations produce sugar here because of the barriers to foreign imports. We pay much more for sugar then the rest of the world and "greedy corporations" benefit from the higher prices.
If we won't import things like cheap sugar from third world countries then we hurt them and ourselves. They can't export the products that they have a comparative advantage in so they stay poor, meanwhile Americans are forced to pay high prices for the goods and also we use up resources that would better be put to other uses.
Could you respond to this article about swaetshops
everyman.typepad.com
"Both Dean and Gephardt are protectionists, or members of the "Free Trade...But" school, as Michael Kinsley describes it here. Gephardt, with Union backing, opposes NAFTA and similar free trade agreements. Dean's nearly as protectionist. There are, of course, the political and (at least short-term) economic benefits to key constituencies that protectionism would provide for Dean or Gephardt, but I'm willing to say both are generally decent human beings who hold these positions from some degree of moral conviction and a desire to improve the lives of exploited workers in the third world.
Unfortunately, the policies they propose would, if applied, lead to precisely the opposite result they intend.
Kristof invites Dean and Gephardt to come to Phnom Penh and discuss trade policy with Nhep Chanda, one of the citizens of the developing world fair traders hope to help.
"One of the most unfortunate trends in the Democratic presidential race has been the way nearly all of the candidates, including Howard Dean, the front-runner, have been flirting with anti-trade positions by putting the emphasis on labor, environmental and human rights standards in international agreements. While Mr. Gephardt calls for an international minimum wage, Mr. Dean was quoted in USA Today in October as saying, "I believe that trade also requires human rights and labor standards and environmental standards that are concurrent around the world." Perhaps the candidates are simply pandering to unions, or bashing President Bush. But my guess is that they sincerely believe that such trade policies would help poor people abroad — and that's why they should all traipse through a Cambodian garbage dump to see how economically naïve these schemes would be.
Nhep Chanda is a 17-year-old girl who is one of hundreds of Cambodians who toil all day, every day, picking through the dump for plastic bags, metal cans and bits of food. The stench clogs the nostrils, and parts of the dump are burning, producing acrid smoke that blinds the eyes. The scavengers are chased by swarms of flies and biting insects, their hands are caked with filth, and those who are barefoot cut their feet on glass. Some are small children. Nhep Chanda averages 75 cents a day for her efforts. For her, the idea of being exploited in a garment factory — working only six days a week, inside instead of in the broiling sun, for up to $2 a day — is a dream. "I'd like to work in a factory, but I don't have any ID card, and you need one to show that you're old enough," she said wistfully."
Kristof doesn't minimize the exploitive nature and harsh conditions of sweatshop work, at least from western eyes. But when your choice is between laboring in a sweatshop or slogging bare-footed through a fetid garbage dump while getting paid less than half of what you'd make in that factory, which would you choose?
"All the complaints about third world sweatshops are true and then some: factories sometimes dump effluent into rivers or otherwise ravage the environment. But they have raised the standard of living in Singapore, South Korea and southern China, and they offer a leg up for people in countries like Cambodia. "I want to work in a factory, but I'm in poor health and always feel dizzy," said Lay Eng, a 23-year-old woman. And no wonder: she has been picking through the filth, seven days a week, for six years. She has never been to a doctor. Here in Cambodia factory jobs are in such demand that workers usually have to bribe a factory insider with a month's salary just to get hired. Along the Bassac River, construction workers told me they wanted factory jobs because the work would be so much safer than clambering up scaffolding without safety harnesses. Some also said sweatshop jobs would be preferable because they would mean a lot less sweat. (Westerners call them "sweatshops," but they offer one of the few third world jobs that doesn't involve constant sweat.)"
Is there substantial room for improvement in third world labor conditions? Undeniably. Is a fair wage earned in safe working conditions something that we should all wish devoutly that all workers in the world
enjoyed? Without a doubt. But boycotting products from nations with sweatshops, or raising import tariffs to effectively keep them out, would have only one outcome: more poverty.
In Asia, moreover, the factories tend to hire mostly girls and young women with few other job opportunities. The result has been to begin to give girls and women some status and power, some hint of social equality, some alternative to the sex industry.
Cambodia has a fair trade system and promotes itself as an enlightened garment producer. That's great. But if the U.S. tries to ban products from countries that don't meet international standards, jobs will be shifted from the most wretched areas to better-off nations like Malaysia or Mexico. Already there are very few factories in Africa or the poor countries of Asia, and if we raise the bar higher, there will be even fewer.
The Democratic Party has been pro-trade since Franklin Roosevelt, and President Bill Clinton in particular tugged the party to embrace the realities of trade. Now the party may be retreating toward protectionism under the guise of labor standards.
That would hurt American consumers. But it would be particularly devastating for laborers in the poorest parts of the world. For the fundamental problem in the poor countries of Africa and Asia is not that sweatshops exploit too many workers; it's that they don't exploit enough. " |
