International trade has grown enormously in recent decades, and goods are now produced in one country and sold around the world. Do the advantages of this development outweigh the disadvantages?

The most significant advantage of open markets is the fall in the price of everyday goods. When a product can be made wherever it is cheapest and shipped anywhere, consumers in every country pay less, and families with modest incomes gain access to items that were once luxuries. Closely linked to

this

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is the employment that exporting creates in developing nations. In Morocco,

for instance

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, the car factories near Tangier now employ tens of thousands of workers who make vehicles for European buyers, and,

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, a region that once offered only seasonal farm work has a stable industrial base.

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, the drawbacks are real and fall unevenly. The most painful is the loss of traditional industries in countries that can no longer compete on cost. Textile towns in northern England,

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, lost most of their mills within a generation when production moved to Asia, and many have never recovered.

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, shipping goods around the world consumes enormous quantities of fuel, so that a cheap shirt carries an environmental price that does not appear on its label. These problems are serious.

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, they are largely matters of policy, since governments can retrain displaced workers and tax the pollution that transport causes,

whereas

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the gains of trade reach almost every household on earth.