Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'fair trade'

November 06, 2009

Critiquing Fair Trade and Dead Aid

Cardus’ Robert Joustra rightly pillories “fair trade” along with the logic of foreign aid in a challenging article, “Fair Trade and Dead Aid: ‘My Voice Can’t Compete with an Electric Guitar.'” Continue Reading...
July 15, 2008

Free trade follies

Last week presidential candidate John McCain distanced himself from economic adviser Phil Gramm, after Gramm’s comments that America had become a “nation of whiners” and that the current concerns over a lagging economy amounted to a “mental recession” rather than any real phenomena. Continue Reading...
January 29, 2008

CFR debate: Free trade or fair trade?

The Council on Foreign Relations is hosting an online debate (in blog form!): “Policy for the Next President: Fair Trade or Free Trade” (HT). From the introduction: “Jonathan Jacoby, associate director of international economic policy at the Center for American Progress and Robert Lane Greene, an international correspondent for the Economist, debate the shape of trade policy for the next U.S. Continue Reading...
October 04, 2007

Fair Trade’s Faded Facade

The Free Exchange blog at Economist.com (HT) concludes a long and thoughtful post on fair trade, specifically in response to this recent NYT article, “Fair Trade in Bloom,” by wondering: And how does this affect coffee supply? Continue Reading...
January 08, 2007

Economic lessons in your morning mug

A NYT editorial informs us today that retail prices for coffee products are rising (HT: Icarus Fallen). We are assured, however, that the price rise has been “relatively modest” and that an important factor is “changes in supply and demand in a global economy.” Continue Reading...
August 08, 2006

Rwandan Coffee Competes and Wins

Unlike the flooded market for conventional coffee products, the specialty coffee market enjoys increasing demand along with limited supply. This means that the potential exists for developing countries to increase the quality and quantity of their coffee production to meet the demand. Continue Reading...
March 20, 2006

Fair trade futility

I was intereviewed for this article in yesterday’s New York Times, but I apparently didn’t make the cut. Nevertheless, in “Fair Prices for Farmers: Simple Idea, Complex Reality,” Jennifer Alsever does an excellent job bringing to light some of the dangers that are inherent with external and artificial adjustments to the price mechanism. Continue Reading...