Who would have known that Gov't subsidies actually repress African Cows? In the article “Brown urges end to ‘scandalous’ trade barriers”, I was informed that “more was spent on an average European cow every day than on a poor African.” This all has come about from subsidies and trade barriers put up but rich countries to hold back the poor countries. It costs poorer countries millions of dollars extra to trade and sell their cows because of the trade barriers.
Gordon Brown is the British Finance Minister. He went out on a limb Jan. 16th to boldly declare that unequal trade is being created by Gov’t subsidies and artificial trade barriers.
The idea in Brown’s speech is that we are holding poorer countries down while instituting our barriers and subsidies. By having a trade barrier, we’re making the competitive playing field uneven in our advantage. In effect, this will hurt us in the long rung. As we learn in economics, competitive companies benefit society in that prices are driven down and efficiency is driven up. At this point, barriers have done nothing but stunt this efficiency growth by keeping new foreign companies from entering into the market.
It's time to break the barriers and let the cows out!
1 comment:
This is a well known problem. Personally, I find it immoral. But, it gets worse. Not only do we put tariffs on imports to keep goods from developing countries out, but we subsidize things like agriculture. This creates surpluses that have to be disposed of - usually to developing countries, and at prices that undercut their local producers.
To some extent, Marie has a point. It is the job of businesses to erect barriers which allow them to make more money. One would hope that our government officials are not dumb enough to be complicit in that. But they are.
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