The Ethics of International Trade Playstations and petroleum. Food and furniture. Clothing and cars. International trade makes these items ready and available to the vast majority of the world, and at affordable prices despite the need to import many of these things (or their components) from other countries. International trade lets Americans buy and enjoy products that we can’t necessarily make or find for ourselves in the United States. It can stimulate the economy, create jobs, and generate new and improved products for the world market. International trade can, however, have the opposite effect if left unregulated and unchecked, harming the economy, removing jobs, and creating poor products. Even if such trade is helping the …show more content…
Why would anyone do this? Minimize costs, of course. Children don’t need to be paid as much as adults (if at all) and they are easy to influence and coerce. To the less ethical businessmen and women of the world, child labor means a cheap and tireless workforce, resulting in higher profits. A profit at the expense of the world’s youth. Gaining profit by reducing costs is a widely practiced business solution, and can be entirely useful and ethical when done in the right spirit. Reducing costs by raising worker hours or reducing worker safety is something completely different, however. Lack of care can easily escalate into downright abuse of workers. Take the shrimp industry in Southeast Asia, an industry bringing in $13 billion annually. In a recent report by the Solidarity Center, an international nonprofit organization for workers rights, some shrimp processing facilities in Thailand and Bangladesh have been run like medieval prisons. One factory raid by Thai police in September 2006 found workers who said, “if they made a mistake on the shrimp peeling line, asked for sick leave, or tried to escape, they could expect to be beaten, sexually molested, or publicly tortured.” The facility was described as “more like a fortress than a factory, with 16-foot-high barbed-wire capped walls, an armed guard force, and an extensive internal closed-circuit television system” (CNN.com). Clearly, this facility would be closed down and the owners arrested right?
International trade is the exchange of capital, goods, and services across international borders or territories. Trade enhances the quality of life and aids the Canadian economy and its people. International trade offers a variety of advantages and disadvantages. First off, trade creates jobs, and it's statistically proven that 1 in 5 jobs depend on trading, either directly or indirectly. Yet this is simply an accounting of how much spending in the economy is accounted for by exports. Taken from another perspective, this vastly understates how dependent Canada is on trade. The structure and the organizations of the entire economy are crucially dependent on trade and integration with regional and global trading networks. Many of the benefits
There are many points that oppose child labor; and yet, in some countries, there seems to be no choice. Children, who become orphans after losing their parents at an early age and have no relatives to support them, have no choice but to work. In developing countries, such as Asia and Africa, there are very few programs that support orphans, due to lack of resources (Grootaert, 7). Parents, living in poverty, sometimes have no other choice but to send their child to work for income.
There can never be any country in the world which can survive on its own without being involved in international trade with other countries. Even the United States a super power can not have an economy which is growing or even raise the wages of our citizens unless we extend our trade beyond our borders and sell products and at the same time buy products from the rest of the population outside our country. We import a lot of goods from other countries. There are instances whereby there can be surplus in the goods that are imported in the United States. For instance the United States is a huge importer of automobiles. A surplus in the imported automobiles can have certain consequences on businesses as well as consumers. This will lead to a price drop of the automobiles. This is good news to the consumers as they will purchase them at lower prices. On the other hand this is bad news to the businesses since the price drop will make them incur a lot of losses.
Imagine a world where trade was not allowed. If someone wanted an apple, then they would have to wander until they found an apple seed, plant and grow the tree using the rain they gathered from hand-made cups or barrels, and wait for years until the tree brought forth fruit. In order to build a house, this person would have to cut down trees with an axe that they forged and built themselves, then they would have to make mud to hold the lumber together so that they could build the house. Forget about electricity, cars, cell phones, most modern technology, because none of these things would be possible without trade. Fortunately, we live in a time when trade is widely accepted across the world. Charles Wheelan, an international economist, notes
Why would someone use child labor? At first glance it would seem that child labor is useless. However, child labor can be valuable to employers throughout time. A quote by Lewis Hine explain it best, “There is work that profits children, and there is work that brings profit only to employers. The object of employing children is not to train them, but to get high profits from their work.”(Hines 1918).
Child labor remains a major social issue in the world, it is not as severe an issue as it was centuries ago, but it still affects millions of kids all over the world today. Children have historically been a part of the world's labor force especially, with the arrival of industrialization. There are many occasions throughout history in which children have been indentured or forced into child slavery within the labor market. Children were viewed as a cheap, manageable and sustainable labor resources by many businesses. Child Labor increased in the United States when the population increased. When many immigrants began moving to the United States to rural areas, they began urbanization, which meant that more people moved to urban areas. There were local needs however there weren’t enough workers, so businesses resorted to hiring children.
There are million of working children all around the world, for example, “Asia has the highest incidence of child labor (152.5 million), followed by Africa (80 million) and Latin America (17.5 million). Measured in proportional terms approximately 40 percent of African children work, while 20 percent of children work in Asia and Latin America respectively.” (Palley) ”The worldwide population of children under fourteen who work full-time is thought to exceed 200 million”. Obviously if most children participate in child labor, then there needs to be more laws regulating it and a better way of enforcing the laws. “The general minimum age was at the first 14 years, later raised to 15, and 16 for specific dangerous environments and night work”(. There are laws on the general age someone can be to work, but there are still many children who work.
The next time when you are out on your shopping trip, chances you may have support a business that exploits children. It is very disturbing and heartbreaking to learn many children are chained to looms for 12 hours a day because families need to have their child bringing home a small amount of moneys. Child labor has always been a difficult subject to address, the topic have become much more complicated and prolific.
They are working long, grueling hours while being treated harshly. Some children work as long as twelve to eighteen hours a day, six days a week. More than half are exposed to the worst forms of child labor such as slavery, drug trafficking and prostitution, as well as involvement in armed conflict (continuetolearn.com). Many of these children are between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, some are even ten years of age or younger. These ages are too young for a child to be put in harms way just to get the job done. Adults should not be associated with this kind of labor, let alone a poor innocent child. By treating children this way, it damages their mental and physical health. A boy who worked on a farm was constantly beaten with branches or a bicycle chain. He was forced to sleep in a small room with eighteen other boys (laborawareness.wordpress.com). These children go long days without obtaining an adequate amount of food and sleep. Treating them in this harsh manner will eventually make them lose trust and become vulnerable. Children become traumatized into thinking the world is a cruel
International trade is defined as the exchanging of goods, services, capital between different countries and regions, which have given rise to a global economy. The various types of trade as well as the constant advancement in technology are continuously changing the economic trends among various industries. In terms of supply and demand, international trade is constantly altering based on current events that are occurring throughout the world.
Since confederation, Canada has had a complicated relationship with its southerly neighbor; the United States of America. History shows us that cooperation with the United States is purely happenstance, only really having advancements and changes occur when compatible leaders from compatible parties are in office at the same time. Over the years, our proximity has led to competing economies and markets, with many industries fearful of one another. The leaders of our two countries realised the biggest threats and issues between us have always been associated with trade. Protective policies such as tariffs have been implemented throughout history as temporary solutions. When ‘temporary’ stopped working, a new solution needed to be found. The discovered solution came in a time when compatible leaders decided on a movement towards a permanent trade agreement between our two countries. The Free Trade Agreement of 1988 and the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994 are Canada’s two most prominent examples of successful free trade agreements with America. However, like all cooperative agreements, when one party changes its opinion or policies, the agreement can become at risk. Even when both parties are in an agreeance, the outcome can effect them in ways they can’t imagine. Despite the prosperity the Free Trade agreements have brought to the Canadian economy over the years, the subsequent reliance on the United States for trade has increased, becoming a
Some of these children are working for money to help their poor families and have to abandon school to do so. Also, if you think about it, this is just like ancient times how children would have to work to get to adulthood and help their family survive. According to David Roodman, “I look forward to the day when there is no child on earth for whom this is the best choice. But we are not there yet” (Four Arguments Against the Elimination of Child Labor 1). We still have not moved on from children laboring all day to help our families survive as much as we would like to think so. But, that still does not mean that it is okay to force children to work and submit themselves to death or pain. They might be working for the benefit of their families, but they should not die and or lose their education for their
International business ethics challenges the corporate world to deal with questions of what to do in situations where ethical standards come into conflict as a result of the different cultural practices in the nation. Since, there is this dilemma that has progressively troubled the large multinational corporations, international business ethics has arisen to help address these adhesive subject matters. There are several international business ethics discussions on the question of how to act in the home country as opposed to the host country is at the central point of most international corporations. The argument in question is how companies should practice their business according
International trade has been in existence throughout history and has an economic impact on the participating countries. Trade in most countries has a share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and helps to boost the
Being the world 's largest economy, the United States is also largest exporter and importer of goods and services. American economic growth relies heavily on trade. According to a recent report on NAFTA, “Since 1992, nearly 20 million new jobs have been created in the U.S., in part due to the 1994 NAFTA agreement. Total trade between the NAFTA partners -- the U.S., Canada, and Mexico -- rose from $293 billion in 1993 to more than $475 billion in 1997, and has increased since. ” (Bowman, Free Trade). It is obvious evidence that international trade is beneficial to the US economy, at least in the 1990s.