Historical Perspectives: Benefits, costs, and impact of free international trade Essay

Our world has become a village and the globalization movement has picked up momentum requiring disposals and individuals alike to adapt to these changes in the reason that their growth or indeed survival depends on it. Globalization has been fuel guide by a consistent practice of free trade whose growth necessitates breaking chain reactor several legal and fiscal barriers in order to make cooperation easier and flow of capital and investments across the globe more effective.Growth of companies and increased competition requires that companies try out grocerys in foreign countries and mutual benefit dictates that bilateral efforts between trading partners be equal and for that an abolition of significant reduction of tariffs and licenses becomes mandatory. Free trade indeed has led to the adoption of capitalism across the globe with only a small fraction of countries still clinging to communism as a form of delivery (Bhagwati 2002).However, free trade was not always the preferr ed form of a market system in the early days and the status quo has been brought through the learn of great economists and philosophers alike whose advocacy against traditional economic practices led to the present free international trade. The first prominent form of international trade was mercantilist which tended to party favour the accumulation of precious metals. The mercantilist economists favored strong protectionist policies which included high tariffs and restricted movement of labor and resources.The emergence of liberal economists like Richard Cobden and Adam Smith led to a systematic attack against such practices and a sustained effort to replace it with free market. This market will be characterized by reduced government control, abolition of restrictions and relying on the forces of demand and supply to determine prices. However, Karl Marx felt that although free market under capitalism was a brilliant and effective form of market structure, he nevertheless felt tha t it led to segregation of ships company and that such a system would collapse and be replaced by a classless society under communism (Marx, 1999).