Мини-сочинение.Английский

2. Free trade and protectionism (both in industrial and developing countries). Is the world trade practice fair today?

There are two contrary trends towards international trade. The first one is campaigning for free trade. In this case countries have open borders, no customs barriers and restrictions towards other countries. Free trade leads to a wide variety of goods appear on the domestic market, and they are cheap. But at Free trade conditions many local producers can’t compete against foreign producers, go bankrupt and leave the market. The entire industries can be ruined of that way. The second negative consequence is that the money of local residents flows abroad.

The opposite trend to this movement is named protectionism. Protectionists oppose the free import of goods by protection of domestic industries from foreign competitors. The import is allowed only to goods which cannot be produced by domestic producers. The disadvantage of protectionism is always the price increase. When the overseas suppliers are not presented on the market, local producers raise prices for the domestic goods. As a result, they earn more money, but it is paid for by the expenses of their citizens. Another disadvantage of protectionism is the fact that countries for which tariffs have been imposed may impose counter-tariffs, what prevents domestic producers from trading there.

Only few countries use only one of these trends. In almost all cases it is a combination of various approaches. For example, the European Union established free trade rules between its members. France and Germany, when they trade with each other, do not pay any duties. But other countries outside the EU are forced to deal with duties, quotas, direct bans, etc.

A classic country with highly developed protectionism is the United States of America. Throughout its history, it regularly practiced and practices toll now high duties on foreign goods. Another example of a protectionist approach is Indonesia, which has the world's largest nickel ore deposits and has recently imposed a complete prohibition on ore exports.

As for our country, in the 90s of the 20th century, Russia opened the domestic market for foreign goods, while Russian products were not competitive in the foreign market, it was the so-called one-sided free trade. In 2000 the reverse trend was set: Russia began supporting domestic producers through subsidies and introduced protectionist measures against overseas goods. For example, nowadays, due to foreign trade barriers, foreign car manufacturers profit from opening a factory in Russia and produce foreign cars here. It has become very expensive to them to import cars.

Russian foreign trade policy is built on a combined principle. In relation to friendly states, we remove barriers to trade and use free trade. A perfect example is cooperation within the Eurasian Economic Union. Concerning «ill-wishers» Russia, on the contrary, puts up protectionist barriers. A famous example is the food embargo against countries that have imposed sanctions against Russia. On the one hand, this led to higher prices for goods on our shelves, and on the other hand, it allowed the domestic producers to increase output in order to fill a vacant market niche.

To top it all off, me can make a conclusion, that modern international trade combines both free trade and protectionism. All countries of the world protect their own interests. Therefore, I believe that the ideals of free trade today are unattainable. Every country intends to import raw materials, and export finished products.