Trade justice

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Trade justice is a campaign by non-governmental organisations, plus efforts by other actors, to change the rules and practices of world trade in order to promote fairness. These organizations include consumer groups, trade unions, faith groups, aid agencies and environmental groups.

The organizations campaigning for trade justice posit this concept in opposition to free trade. Supporters of free trade, typically those in economics, business, lobbying, and the mainstream press, trust in the “invisible hand” of the market to provide on its own for the needs of societies around the world.^[1][2] Fundamental to their beliefs is the value of individual liberty, believed to be the least infringed upon when the market is used to replace most of the centralized government's responsibilities of allocating resources.^[2] They tend to support neoliberal policies of privatization, deregulation, and tax cuts, and on the international trade level, policies that loosen restrictions on corporations’ ability to trade and make profits across borders.^[2] Rupert argues that because free trade advocates placed themselves on the side of “science," they would label activists as ignorant, protectionist, and selfish.^[2] Activists would be designated as “anti-globalization,” a term first coined by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.^[3]

Trade justice advocates are not anti-globalization, but are instead against corporate-centered trade liberalization which ignores labor, environmental, and human rights.^[3] They argue that truly free trade does not and will never exist, and that governmental policies on trade should be in the public interest, rather than the interest of wealthy entities who they argue try to influence trade negotiation to benefit their individual interests.^[4] Rupert argues that they are cautious of the spread of neoliberal policies to the point where the power of private corporations will be enhanced to the point of “business totalitarianism”.^[2] Advocates of trade justice argue that growing inequity and serious gaps in social justice, and the global export of terrorism, are symptoms of an economic system that permits harms to be exported to other countries, while importing their goods. They point to extinction, deforestation, social unrest, as consequences of globalization, and in particular of an "unfair" globalization.^[5] In the past, the responses sought by critics of the international trade system included various penalties on "unfair" goods. This argument generally made little headway against the long-term movement towards free trade; imposition of penalties for "dumping" was sometimes motivated by domestic political reasons such as the United States imposition of steel tariffs in 2001).

Today, the trade justice movement concentrates more on the abolition of agricultural subsidies and dumping, and to a much lesser extent on offsetting penalties on "unfair" goods. Indeed, although there are many who are still critical of free trade in general, there is a trend towards campaigning against what is seen as hypocrisy by developed countries in using protectionism against the poorest countries, especially in agricultural products, while requiring them to leave their own producers without protection.