World Bank Article - Globalization and International Trade

A must read for key issues within the topic of Globalisation and International Trade.

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Extracts:

'Globalization” refers to the growing interdependence of countries resulting from the increasing integration of trade, finance, people, and ideas in one global marketplace. International trade and cross-border investment flows are the main elements of this integration.

Globalization started after World War II but has accelerated considerably since the mid-1980s, driven by two main factors. One involves technological advances that have lowered the costs of transportation, communication, and computation to the extent that it is often economically feasible for a firm to locate different phases of production in different countries. The other factor has to do with the increasing liberalization of trade and capital markets: more and more governments are refusing to protect their economies from foreign competition or influence through import tariffs and nontariff barriers such as import quotas, export restraints, and legal prohibitions.

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Geography and Composition of Global Trade (IMPT!!)

Over the past 10 years patterns of international trade have been changing in favor of trade between developed and developing countries. Developed countries still trade mostly among themselves, but the share of their exports going to developing countries grew from 20 percent in 1985 to 22 percent in 1995. At the same time, developing countries have increased trade among themselves. Still, developed countries remain their main trading partners, the best markets for their exports, and the main source of their imports.

Most developing countries’ terms of trade deteriorated in the 1980s and 1990s because prices of primary goods—which used to make up the largest share of developing country exports—have fallen relative to prices of manufactured goods. For example, between 1980 and 1995 real prices of oil dropped almost fourfold, prices of cocoa almost threefold, and prices of coffee about twofold. There is still debate about whether this relative decline in commodity prices is permanent or transitory, but developing countries that depend on these exports have already suffered heavy economic losses that have slowed their economic growth and development.

In response to these changes in their terms of trade, many developing countries are increasing the share of manufactured goods in their exports, including exports to developed countries (Figure 12.2). The most dynamic categories of their manufactured exports are labor-intensive, low-knowledge products (clothes, carpets, some manually assembled products) that allow these countries to create more jobs and make better use of their abundant labor resources.

By contrast, developing countries’ imports from developed countries are mostly capital- and knowledge-intensive manufactured goods—primarily machinery and transport equipment—in which developed countries retain their comparative advantage.