Affect of Business and Market
When a firm or an individual buys a good or a service produced more cheaply abroad, living standards in both countries increase. There are other reasons consumers and firms buy abroad that also make them better off—the product may better fit their needs than similar domestic offerings or it may not be available domestically. Access to international markets plays an important role in an economy’s development. While tariffs are still among the policy instruments most widely-used to promote or restrict trade, their relative importance has declined. Other factors, namely trade-related transaction costs, have taken precedence. Logistics and freight expenses, customs administrative fees and border costs have become more important for small traders. While the significance of small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in the overall economy is widely recognized, until recently SMEs were largely absent from trade debates. The government’s trade policy can affect your business by making it easier or more difficult to trade across international borders. Trade policy can include the imposition of import tariffs, quotas on imports and exports of certain goods, and subsidies for local producers to support them against international competition. Governments often enter into bilateral trade agreements with other countries, with the aim of reducing tariffs and barriers to business and establishing a free trade area or common market. This can be helpful to some businesses, but can also lead to increased competition from abroad.
Still, even if societies as a whole gain when countries trade, not every individual or company is better off. When a firm buys a foreign product because it is cheaper, it benefits—but the (more costly) domestic producer loses a sale. Usually, however, the buyer gains more than the domestic seller loses. Except in cases in which the costs of production do not include such social costs as pollution, the world is better off when countries import products that are produced more efficiently in other countries. The restoration of more open trade following World War II involved major multilateral and preferential trade agreements aimed at lowering tariff and nontariff barriers to trade. For the first time, economic relations and international trade were governed by a multilateral system of rules, including the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the Bretton Woods institutions. These trade agreements, combined with tremendous advances in transport and communications technology, led to unprecedented rates of growth in international trade. Between 1996 and 2013, for example, global trade in goods grew at an annual rate of 7.6% on average. Greater international trade is strongly correlated with economic growth. A study using data from 118 economies over nearly 50 years (1950–98) found that those opening up their trade regimes experienced a boost in their average annual GDP growth rates of about 1.5 percentage points. The relationship between trade and economic growth can also be observed at the firm level. Substantial evidence suggests that knowledge flows from international buyers and competitors help improve the performance of exporting firms.