The case for free trade
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 14 February 2020
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Does the backlash against globalisation ignore the huge benefits of world trade? And how realistic are post-Brexit Britain's ambitions to become a global trade powerhouse?
Manuela Saragosa asks Cambridge economics professor Meredith Crowley how much access the UK can expect to retain to the European market, given that the country wants to diverge from EU regulations. It's an example of a problem that all countries in our globalised economy face - the "globalisation trilemma".
Meanwhile Fred Hochberg, former head of the US Export Import Bank and author of Trade Is Not a Four-Letter Word, says that without free trade we wouldn't have wonders of the modern world such as the iPhone or the taco bowl.
Producers: Laurence Knight, Frey Lindsay
(Picture: Container ships docked at Port of Felixstowe in the UK;. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC with me, Manuela Saragossa. |
| 0:06.1 | Coming up, the problem with globalization and free trade. |
| 0:10.1 | It has hurt poor people and lower skilled people in rich countries. |
| 0:15.0 | Government has not really been honest about that, and that is, I think, caused a lot of this backlash. |
| 0:20.7 | But does embracing free trade and globalization inevitable? honest about that, and that is, I think, caused a lot of this backlash. |
| 0:27.0 | But does embracing free trade and globalization inevitably mean giving up on some sovereignty? |
| 0:31.5 | The two are not incompatible. You look at Japan. You look at South Korea. You look at Canada. |
| 0:34.9 | You look at Australia. They maintain a fair amount of sovereignty. |
| 0:38.1 | That's all here in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:48.0 | Brexit, Britain, wants to become a global powerhouse of free trade. It wants to be free to strike its own trade deals around the world instead of being subsumed into the European Union's trading |
| 0:53.2 | arrangements. It's a remarkable |
| 0:55.1 | ambition given that it comes at a time when countries like the United States, once seen as the |
| 1:00.2 | world's cheerleader for free trade, is putting up trade barriers. There, President Trump has led a backlash |
| 1:06.7 | against globalisation. But there are still champions of globalization, even in America. Fred |
| 1:13.0 | Hochberg is one of them. He used to be chairman and president of the Export-Import Bank of the United |
| 1:18.9 | States, and he's just written a book called Trade is not a four-letter word. There has been a lot of research |
| 1:25.3 | and polling of late that about two-thirds of Americans, |
| 1:28.8 | Republicans and Democrats, think trade is better for our economy than not. |
| 1:33.2 | Okay, so let's say you have to make this pitch in support of free trade and globalization |
| 1:38.6 | to someone somewhere in the Midwest who's lost their job as a result of their car plant moving overseas. |
| 1:47.2 | Right. Well, I think part of the problem is politicians, particularly on the Republican side in our country, |
| 1:53.3 | have wanted to deny for years that they're going to be losers. And trade has winners and losers, |
... |
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