Fair Trade for All - How Trade Can Promote Development

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Posted on August 4, 2006

Previously filed under: Book and Film Reviews

In a new book Joseph E. Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton offer a controversial argument about how globalization can actually help Third World countries develop and prosper.

Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Andrew Charlton
Published by Oxford University Press (USA), January 05, 2006, 352pages.

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and author of the New York Times bestselling book Globalization and Its Discontents, Joseph E. Stiglitz here joins with fellow economist Andrew Charlton to offer a challenging and controversial argument about how globalization can actually help Third World countries to develop and prosper.

In Fair Trade For All, Stiglitz and Charlton address one of the key issues facing world leaders today--how can the poorer countries of the world be helped to help themselves through freer, fairer trade? To answer this question, the authors put forward a radical and realistic new model for managing trading relationships between the richest and the poorest countries. Their approach is designed to open up markets in the interests of all nations and not just the most powerful economies, to ensure that trade promotes development, and to minimize the costs of adjustments. Beginning with a brief history of the World Trade Organization and its agreements, the authors explore the issues and events which led to the failure of 2003 Cancun summit and the obstacles that face the successful completion of the Doha Round of negotiations. Finally they spell out the reforms and principles upon which a successful agreement must be based.

Vividly written, highly topical, and packed with insightful analyses, Fair Trade For All offers a radical new solution to the problems of world trade. It is a must read for anyone interested in globalization and development in the Third World.

Reprinted with permission from the Foreign Policy Association.

To read another Global Envision article on fair trade, see Trade and Protectionism.

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