What is Fair Trade?

[Idioteque]

I was reading the thread on globalization. Several people stated that they are opposed to free trade because it exploits third world workers but support "fair trade".

What exactly is fair trade?

If you ask a lot of the labor unions or people like Byron Dorgan or David Sirota, they will say that fair trade means using tariffs and quotas to stop cheap imports and lower the trade deficit. How the hell this would help workers in developing countries, I have no idea but they call this "fair trade".

If you ask anti poverty groups like Oxfam, they would say that fair trade means opening up our markets to developing nations while letting them keep up their protections and ending our farm subsidies that hurt poor farmers in other countries.

These two philosophies seem 100% opposed to one another, yet they are both called "fair trade". Somebody help me out here!

[Eric J in MN]

1. It's fair trade for countries we made deals with to...

..have to allow unions and to set environmental standards.

[ET Awful]

2. Look here . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_trade

http://www.fairtradefederation.com/

Good info on what is typically meant by Fair Trade and what was probably being referred to.

[DTinAZ]

3. It has multiple meanings

The two words "fair trade," when used together have multiple connotations. Take a look at the disambiguation page on this at Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_trade_%28disambiguation%29

DT

[ComerPerro]

4. The two philosophies don't have to be exclusive

you could, for example, impose these restrictions on any nation UNLESS they can be proven and documented to treat workers fairly.

Or, for example, you could impose tarrifs on nations that are not one of these developing nations.


Problem with that, though, is who gets to set the standards...

[wtmusic]

6. "treat workers FAIRly..." Oops--there's that word again!

the one that causes all the durn trouble

[ComerPerro]

7. defining a word by using the word... LOL

[wtmusic]

5. Good luck!

:popcorn:

"Fair" means anything you want it to mean (it usually involves more money for you, though) ;-)

[sweetheart]

8. The issue at consensus is human rights standards

Trotsky pointed this out using the terms revolutionary and conciliationist,
that there are 2 poles in our global intertrading complex world, one pole
represented by the USA is the corporatist revolutionary, and the other pole
adapts and reconciles... sorta like "we make history, you read it."

If we need a new history, shouldn't it elevate all persons to highest leavels
known of heatlh, education and human rights ever before in history, or whats
it worth? Each country has its own obligation to its public for this, who
knows better to greater or lesser degrees that our planet is ruled by
a feudal pantheist corporate elite, and fair trade is just a soundbyte
for renegotating the contract between humankind and the plantation owners.

[izzie]

9. Well has changed since I was growing up.

The difference in buying in Canada and here was really different. Duty on things and all that. I lived in St. Louis in the 50's and it was known as a free trade zone and every thing was cheaper. I never could get it all into my head. I felt I should be able to buy with out all this added on stuff, never thinking of the people who made the stuff and that they were working like dogs so I would be able to buy anything at a good price. I do not know the answer to this but I would think it could be made fair to the buyers and makers.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. In conventional trade, the producers of raw materials and foods in

the Third World are paid a pittance, with a dollar a day not being uncommon. The expense that we in the industrialized countries pay is almost ALL due to middlemen: the broker in the country of origin, the shippers, the processors in the U.S., the advertisers, the packagers, the retailers.

The Fair Trade movement skips the middlemen and buys directly from the peasants, paying them more than the conventional brokers. In some cases, they teach the peasants to add value to their products by making the raw materials into something that can be sold for a higher price.

When I was in England, I noticed that the Fair Trade movement, pretty much limited to countercultural co-ops in this country, was everywhere, even in pretty conventional stores.