What Does Free Trade Mean?

What does free trade mean?

Free trade is a concept in economics, it is not a reality in just about any market on earth.In the concept of free trade, there are no outside influences and all consumers and sellers have the same knowledge. There is transparency in pricing, quality, etc. This is the equivalent of saying "in a perfect world..." before making a statement.In a free trade world, people would be able to sell uninspected meat or dangerous products. But consumers would know that these are potentially dangerous and would offer less money for them. This never happens. In a free trade world, anyone would be able to sell anything to any person. This never happens. Businesses must be licensed and respond to government rules.In a broader sense some people refer to "free trade" as trade between countries where there are no duties and tariffs levied on the products. But that is not free trade because the government often decides who can and cannot export products. And there may be rules on the other end about what can and cannot be imported in. For instance, two countries could have "free trade" between them with no tariffs, but if one country does not allow for bootleg DVDs to be sold, it does not matter that there is no tariff because there is not technically "free trade" even if the consumers in that country understand that the DVD is not legal and might not play in their devices.

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Why does the WTO not enforce free trade in agriculture and ban illegal subsidies in the West ?

In the West we have a quaint custom of voting for our political leaders and farmers seem to regularly vote, so why should our elected leaders want to take away benefits generations old and lose their support and votes.... PS it also hard to compete against a 6000 acre completely mechanized western farm growing genetically enhanced corn, soy beans and pigs with or without subsidies..."feed the world"...especially when competing against the rest of the World who are farming a sixty acre section with a hand driven roto-tiller and a garden tractor.

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What distinguishes communist mutual aid from capitalist free trade?

What distinguishes communist mutual aid from capitalist free-trade?I dunno. What distinguishes capitalist mutual aid from capitalist free-trade? For that matter, free trade does not happen unless both parties are mutually aided by the exchange.I assume that communist, with a lowercase "C" refers to a system of free human cooperation, free of government coercion and threats of force, rather than the Bolshevik and Maoist socialism that goes by the name Communism. The difference between free exchange and free mutual aid and the coerced mutual aid of Communism is the presence of guns manned by government employees authorized to shoot people who do not cooperate. Him

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Has capitalism and free trade failed us or did we fail capitalism and free trade?

The core reason we are in an economic meltodown is the real estate crash combined with the sub prime meltdown. If you are looking to point blame, point the finger at democrats. When Republicans TWICE tried to regulate Fannie/Freddie and sub prime loans, dems balked and called them racists.

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If Obama is really so concerned about global warming, why doesn't he stop free trade?

We need to be doing a lot to stop the increasing threats of global warming, the kind of situation you describe is one of them. The thing is, with politics and money it's so very hard to get actual working plans and strategy. People are focused on their own lifetime, not worrying about the problems they are dooming our children to face. This is the hardest thing to overcome, having people think about the future of our only home, even when it wo not necessarily effect them directly. It makes me upset, it depresses me. I am almost to the point where I have to accept that people do not care enough and that our home might not last longer after this generation.

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what do you think about the free trade agreement?

Sent a lot of jobs overseas! I am no expert on free trade agreements, but they seem to hurt our local economies

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What would be the effect of Trump's withdrawal from the free trade deal with South Korea?

The reason we do trade and why capitalism is producing great results is, because at every transaction, at every trade, both parties are getting more value. If you buy something for $10 you do it because you value this thing more than the $10 and the seller values the $10 more. The same is true on international trade. However if there is friction, (not free trade) then there is value taken away from the trade partners and ultimately from the people. So effectively canceling the trade deal will mean that people have less value. On many sides. Unfortunately Americans rarely understand the difference between value and price