Global Economy And The Law

Global Economy and the Law Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation Global Economy and the Law Global economy appears to be complex. Before the introduction of the trade regulatory bodies, countries were tree to set their tariffs as they pleased in the name of protecting their industries. It was these acts that led to the great depression in the 1930s. After that, the world leaders began to see the benefits of regulating trade and trade regulatory bodies have been formed. The current body is the WTO and Stiglitz (2006) notes that it is an imperial law that is imperfect. In this essay, I agree with Stiglitz that rules are imperfect and even in their imperfection, they are better than not having any rules at all. Stiglitz (2006) outlines how trade has evolved over the years. The author looks back at the history of trade agreements. He details the events that led to the formation of the current WTO. In his opinion, the author believes that the current trade agreements are more unfair to the developing countries and that even though WTO has been pretending to be working towards equality, less has been achieved. But ever since the formation of these trade regulatory bodies, developing countries have gotten worse in terms of the effect of the regulations. In page 78-79, the author points out that Sub-Saharan Africa has lost close to $1.2 billion as result of these regulations while the developed countries have realized gains in excess of $350 billion. The U.S and the European countries, the author argues, have advocated for free trade while at the same time massively protecting themselves against the imports coming from the developing countries. In this regard, the developed countries pass those agendas that favor them. The author has also strongly argued against intellectual property protection as a way of discouraging innovation. Most of the developed countries have proposed laws that ensure that inventions of their companies are protected. However, according to the author, this is a way of discouraging development and reinventions. Chang (2003) looks at the history of capitalism. The author notes that Britain and U.S greatly benefited from protectionism before starting the call for free trade. The British were the first to call for free trade after greatly benefiting from protectionism. This was also the trend that was followed by the U.S who developed their infant industries through protectionism before eventually calling for free trade. This, the author argues, amounts to using protectionism to attain greatness and after they have realized that they have reaped all the benefits they could, they kick the ladder away so that no other person can use it to climb and reach them. Other countries also practiced protectionism and it garnered them a great amount of wealth. Calling for free trade now puts the developing countries in danger of never having the opportunity to climb and reach the developed countries. The best that can be done to the developing countries is to allow them to practice policies that can match the stages of development that they are at. This is the only way to enable them to realize a faster growth as they did in the 1960s and 70s. The current strategies employed, especially by the call for free trade, have only se...