HOW DOES INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS SUCH AS WORLD TRADE Research Paper

HOW DOES INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS SUCH AS WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION (WTO), EUROPEAN UNION (EU) AND NORTH AMERICA - Research Paper Example Free trade has highly devastated American industries and American jobs at large. The Senator Barrack Obama in 2007 indicated his believe in free trade (Raskin, et al. 42). He however acknowledged that the burdens that came with this trade highly outweighed the benefits especially for millions of Americans. The trade has contributed to adverse working conditions. Underdeveloped countries will want to cut down on costs in a bid to benefit from price advantages but on the other hand, many employees in the respective countries end up facing low pay, bad working conditions and forced labor including abusive child labor. As underdeveloped countries attempt to cut costs to gain a price advantage, many workers in these countries face low pay, substandard working conditions and even forced labor and abusive child labor. Yet the WTO states that it does not consider a manufacturer’s treatment of workers reason for countries to bar importation of that manufacturer's products. The WTO howe ver notes that developing countries insist any attempt to include working conditions in trade agreements is meant to end their cost advantage in the world market. This trade often contributes to environmental damage. An increase of corporate farms in developing countries tends to increase pesticide and energy use, and in turn host countries ignore costly environmental standards. The Global Development and Environmental Institute, however, find the environmental impact mixed. The WTO is criticized for not allowing barriers to imports based on inadequate environmental standards in countries where goods are produced (Richardson 76-9). Yet the WTO points to its ruling in the 1990s allowing a U.S. ban on shrimp imports because fishing methods threatened endangered sea turtles outside U.S. borders. The extent to which environmental standards should be considered in free trade is an ongoing debate within the WTO. The trade agreements tend to draw protests from the U.S. public as a result o f feared job loss to foreign countries with cheaper labor. Yet proponents of free trade say new agreements help to improve the economy on either side. There is no clear picture of whether the trade significantly affects U.S. employment levels, given all the economic forces that affect job rates. Proponents of free trade contend that even if the economies of developing nations improve under free trade, those economies are still too small to have any real effect on the U.S. economy and job market (Goldstein 21). Unions have strongly criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the United States, Mexico and Canada as critically harmful to workers and the U.S. economy. The AFL-CIO argues NAFTA has harmed consumers and workers thereby contributing to a loss of jobs and drop in income while strengthening the clout of multinational corporations. The unions contend that the increased capital mobility facilitated by free trade has hurt the environment and weakened gover nment regulations. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), reports that many economists agree NAFTA has caused some overall improvement in U.S. jobs but with harmful side effects. Free trade can cause turbulence in sectors of a domestic economy, such as long-established