Topic > Essay on Free Trade and Fair Trade - 727

For developing countries, however, most producers are small and poor who do not have the potential to compete with powerful producers in the highly competitive international market and agriculture is their main export commodity, just trade tends to offer more benefits than free trade. For developing countries, the way out of poverty is to gain benefits from trade, not short-term aid. As President Museveni of Uganda (Byers, 2003) states that trade is much more significant than assistance or debt relief for developing countries, for example, five times the amount of aid obtained by African countries equates to an increase in Africa's share of world exports of just 1%. However, it may be difficult for developing countries to compete with selfish developed countries in a free trade context and this often results in a worse situation. In contrast, Fair Trade not only provides them with cash aid as a Fair Trade reward, but also helps them sell their products at guaranteed prices with a stable income in the form of long-term contracts without having to compete directly with the larger manufacturers. According to research by Vásquez-Leó (2010), the Manduvira cooperative is a small producer in Paraguay, one of the viable producers of organic sugar in the fair trade markets, which has committed to fair trade because it does not have the ability to compete with Brazil, which is the largest sugar exporter in the world, in the free international market for the sale of conventional sugar. Fair trade helps the Manduvira cooperative to obtain greater benefits without directly competing with other large producers and to improve its situation through a stable and adequate income by selling organic sugar through fair trade markets around the world. Furthermore, they also receive the bonus for free