16 July 2008

Fair Trade still isn't

Increasingly UK newspapers have taken to producing their own TV clips, which unsurprisingly are often smarter and more interesting than the BBC and commercial TV.

Today I present to you a piece from the Daily Telegraph as part of a series it calls "Holy Cows". It is presented by Sameh el-Shahat from Egypt, and it tackles just a couple of the myths of so called Fairtrade. For example, looking at how much of a margin is taken for fair trade and how much actually gets to the farmers, and secondly how fair trade is a distraction from the real trade agenda of free trade. Paying farmers a bit more for the raw commodity whilst maintaining high trade barriers that prevent them from selling the commodity processed is cheating them. I've said before there are many arguments against this well intentioned distracting fraud here, here and here. Oh and to some more liberal critics, yes this isn't a non-initiation of force, but it is fraud, and it assuages consciences while distracting people away from the real issue - trade protectionism. This of course, is deliberate, as much of the environmentalist/leftist end of the political spectrum actually supports that (OxFam notably doesn't).

The article is here

The video here

1 comment:

homepaddock said...

The only really fair trade is free trade.