Is Free Trade desirable? Does it primarily benefit the wealthy? And what are its impacts on individual autonomy and human dignity? These are some of the fundamental questions that acclaimed trade law expert, Michael Trebilcock, sets out to answer in this pithy and insightful journey through the past, present and future of international trade agreements and trade policy.
An internationally renowned scholar of law and economics, Michael J. Trebilcock has spent over fifty years teaching and researching at the intersection between ideas, interests, and institutions. In Public Inquiries, Trebilcock reflects on his extensive experiences and sheds light on the role of scholars in engaging with the Canadian public policy-making process. Drawing on a number of case studies, Public Inquiries gives an informed overview of the role of ideas and interests in shaping the policy-making process. Trebilcock takes readers through his personal experiences and what he has learned throughout his career. He puts forward general lessons about the public policy-making process and reform in areas including consumer protection, competition policy, trade policy, electricity reform, and legal aid. By showing that not all experiences have been triumphant, and that disappointments can be as revealing as successes, Trebilcock draws out personal lessons and insights with a view to improving the structure and effectiveness of public inquiries.
The fair trade and food sovereignty movements adopt very different strategies for challenging the existing international agricultural trade regime. Food sovereignty contests and resists the existing system, employing contentious politics and an "outside strategy" motivated by the view that the regime cannot be reformed. Meanwhile, fair trade largely focuses on existing opportunities within the system, taking up a collaborative, "inside strategy" in an effort to progress towards an equitable and just trade system. These movements have notable differences in their views on how to change how trade is governed. This research seeks to explain and understand why these two different movements take up different strategies in pursuit of a common goal. To understand and explain these two strategies, I analyze their strategies and activities, and the factors that explain these, through an interdisciplinary analytical framework that bridges the theory and practice of governance and change. My findings and analysis demonstrate that when we analyze these movements through such a lens, we see more clearly the complexities of governing international trade and challenging neoliberal hegemony, and how the seemingly divergent strategies of these movements are complementary to achieving economic justice. The fair trade movement's inside, collaborative strategy has leveraged available opportunities to shape policy, raise awareness on injustices in trade and global supply chains, and to change the norms and discourses on international trade. These activities are complemented by political advocacy that is rarely acknowledged in the academic analysis of the movement. Those in the movement who work with fair trade markets do not treat markets as a sufficient mechanism to address injustices in the international trade system. Rather, they see markets as a short-term option for poor producers, and as a mechanism to contribute to facilitating new opportunities to make long-term changes in the system. However, the movement responds to existing conditions, and does not seek to push for new opportunities where none exist. Food sovereignty, meanwhile, has forged space for peasant voices and democratic legitimacy in global governance of food and agriculture through its contentious politics, and has been part of the movement that has raised significant awareness and distrust around free trade agreements. But the movement appears to be guided by more principles than a strategy that has identified the processes for achieving its goals for fairer trade. It also does not fully appreciate how its strategy affects export commodity farmers. While it seeks to dismantle, rather than reform, the WTO, it does not have a concrete vision for an alternative without the WTO. With a vision that no opportunities can emerge from its contentious politics, its strategy does not align with what we know about this type of strategy's contributions to change. I conclude that both movements' strategies are necessary to changing the international agricultural trade regime, and neither alone is sufficient. I question and problematize a tendency to analyze movements that treat their strategies and activities in isolation of broader contributions to common problems. This is matters for academic analysis of these and other movements moving forward. Rather than evaluating movements in isolation, might we consider instead what contributions they bring, and be careful to consider these contributions as part of a broader collection of movements and activities?
The Politics of Fair Trade argues that fair trade is more than just labels on specialty coffee products. Nor is fair trade just protectionism in disguise. Rather, fair trade is opposition to unrestricted trade based on sincere concerns about environmental and labor conditions abroad. Fair traders are not trying to protect jobs or the economy at home, but do not want to see workers exploited and the environment degraded in their trading partners. Academics and policymakers are ill equipped to deal with fair trade concerns because they wrongly assume trade preferences run along a single dimension from free trade to protection. This book introduces a multidimensional theory of trade policy preferences, arguing that people can oppose trade for different and unrelated reasons. The book then demonstrates, using public opinion data in the U.S. and EU and Congressional voting data in the U.S., that fair traders are sincere and not simply protectionists. The book demonstrates why fair trade poses a threat to free trade and argues that free traders should include stronger and enforceable labor and environmental standards in trade agreements in order to win the support of fair traders. Doing so will enable free trade to continue while also helping to improve conditions in developing countries, satisfying the concerns of both free traders and fair traders.
