Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Strategic Trade Agreement

At one point in the lecture, Professor Jackson brings up strategic trade agreements, and poses the question about if these are coercion through another means. It seems as though coercion may be an incorrect way of looking at the circumstances.

Leverage may be a better way of analyzing trade agreements, strategic or not. In any bilateral trade agreement, one nation or another may have more or less leverage in a particular area. A poor nation may have access to specific raw materials. China and India are such large countries that access to their markets gives them leverage.

So what would make a trade agreement strategic? Just because the US and the UK trade doesn't mean any agreements made are not mutually advantageous. Even one of the most strategic economic plans in US history, the Marshall Plan, was advantageous to American businesses because European countries became markets for American goods. I doubt that coercion had a large role to play in that example.

In more modern situations, utilizing a trade agreement to further other geo-political goals of a nation is not necessarily coercion. One state may be able to negotiate better terms in a trade deal due to some effects that another nation may want to have. But to call that coercion is going a bit too far.

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