Sublime

Modern trade pacts can be traced back to the post–World War II period, when, in 1947, twenty-three countries signed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. GATT’s emphasis was on reducing tariffs inhibiting the flow of manufactured goods, and in that the organization succeeded: the average global import tariff on goods has more than halved, fal

Free trade is a form of trade in which goods and services easily cross borders and can be purchased at a “market price” that reflects the costs of production and transit along with whatever profit the manufacturer seeks. The principal alternatives to free trade tend to be protectionism, which involves erecting barriers to imports to shield domestic

Examples of this practice are “the patenting of genes and lifeforms, the use of copyrights to lock up creativity and culture, the privatization of water and land, and attempts to transform the open Internet into a closed, proprietary marketplace” (Bollier, 2011).