Ethics in International Trade and Economics
The parallel between economics and human values.
Making a first approach, we must know the concepts of economics, Marshall (1890) defines the economy as “the science that examines the part of the individual and social activity especially enshrined to achieve and use the material conditions of well -being” (P. 7). On the other hand Samuelson and Nordhaus (1986) tell us that “the economy is the study of the way in which societies use scarce resources to produce valuable goods and distribute them among the different individuals” (P. 4). And as we will analyze human values around the economy, it is convenient to know the concepts of ethics by Moore (1995) that defines ethical as: “Word of Greek origin, with two possible origins: the first is the word Greek ethos ethos, which can be translated by habit;The second is also written ethos, which means owned by character ”(P. 4), then means the way of being or character that is related to custom, the way of proceeding and behaving, good behavior and the way of acting. The usual behavior that determines the nature of man as a way of life.
Felber (2010) insists that in today’s economy they prevail complete. Felber (2010) is held that there should be no disagreement between the values of the economy and the values of society. The economy leads to efficacy, selfishness and competitiveness, while social relationships do so around human values, such as honesty, empathy, trust or cooperation. But when our daily guide points to an ethical direction of trust, cooperation, will to share and sudden.
Making a direct approach to one of the clearest examples of incentive of selfishness, greed, greed, envy, lack of consideration and responsibility, we find capitalism. The capitalist economy deals with an economic and social system based on systems that seek the maximization of the benefits and the empowerment of the competition where the means of production must be privately owned and capital serves as a source to generate wealth.
From this productive structure, a social order, interpersonal relationships, ideology, decision making, ways of acting and subjective thinking derives, without also mentioning that capitalism is the only economic system in history that lacks its own moral code andspecific.
Ethical and non -ethical trade
The action to trade under ethical guidelines, without the imperative need to "win more" at the expense of everything, is a matter of very little visibility in the new times, much more even in developing countries. It is easy to say and argue that the new markets with their new demands require drastic, competitive decisions, and not accept that we exceed our ethical position, our professionalism before the facts assumed.
At the same time we cannot overlook that currently, in the commercial world the true existing paradox does not refer to protectionism and free trade, both very questioned issues, but to ethical and non -ethical trade. Felber (2018)
To better clarify the idea exposed by Felber we must first know, what is protectionism? This is understood as an economic policy that seeks to protect national production by imposing all kinds of tariff restrictions on imported goods, in a way to more expensive and impoverish them in front of national goods. While the opposite of protectionism we have free trade, in which the countries involved operate freely in import and export of goods, with tariff measures of equal value for each integral country of the block, in a nutshell you can say that there are no barrierscommercial.
The logical thing would be that there must be less commercial barriers among the contributing nations of sustainable development, of cultural diversity, of the fair distribution of wealth, and rather they should put barriers to all that country that breaches human rights and contributes to the worsening of worseningClimate change situations.
At present, the opposite happens, everything begins with the type of relationships involved in negotiations, an example of this are the problems of relationship around the commercial crisis between China and the US. UU. It is tension mostly at the beginning of 2018, where the Asian giant, China files a complaint against the United States before the World Trade Organization (WTO), it has a background of several episodes in the so -called ‘trade war’ recently unleashed betweenboth countries.
It is a conflict between both nations with respect to commercial tariffs together. This type of conflict generally arises because the nations involved are trying to improve their trade balance with the counterpart in the conflict, according to the Business Dictionary. In the case of EE. UU., For example, its commercial deficit with China amounts to US $ 375 billion. There are increases in the rates of certain products, which finally fall on the consumer;The price of the dollar, the insecurity of investors in the stock exchange, and many other events that start from this big problem.
As for discrimination or evasion of tariffs, it is not an unknown case for Latin America or why not also for South America, where foreign trade is involved by illegal actions of all kinds.
We can observe the imminent of economic cannibalism to which today’s world society is subjected, even there are many economic theories that point to a better distribution of wealth. We must convince us of the social purposes that the world economy must have, that trade is proportional and just for all, point to the duty of its practice within the economy. The foreign trade professional must exercise his profession by putting his ethical position in the foreground and that his practices within it is equivalent to his ethics.
In my personal experience I can say that I have had to live closely with people who acted illegally, at all costs in order to enhance and build their own wealth. We cannot blame everyone, since there are people who do fight against unfair competition, smuggling, capitalism, cannibalism and other darkness of the economic world, which can be fought through the good practice and just application of theLaws.
"Every person, as long as it does not violate the laws of justice, remains in perfect freedom to pursue their own interest in their own way and to lead their work and capital towards competition with any other person or kind of people" (P.877).
I think the economy is always good and has altruistic purposes, only that man has become consumerist.
We can conclude that the professional in the area of the economy and business, as well as the authorities must make intelligent and diplomatic decisions among the countries, to avoid constant confrontation to these problems, they must give solution to the same. It is a fact that decision -making is influenced from their respective realities and most of the time the solutions occur in the presence or absence of ethics.
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