HOW DOES INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS SUCH AS WORLD TRADE Research Paper

HOW DOES INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS SUCH AS WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION (WTO), EUROPEAN UNION (EU) AND NORTH AMERICA - Research Paper Example Free trade has highly devastated American industries and American jobs at large. The Senator Barrack Obama in 2007 indicated his believe in free trade (Raskin, et al. 42). He however acknowledged that the burdens that came with this trade highly outweighed the benefits especially for millions of Americans. The trade has contributed to adverse working conditions. Underdeveloped countries will want to cut down on costs in a bid to benefit from price advantages but on the other hand, many employees in the respective countries end up facing low pay, bad working conditions and forced labor including abusive child labor. As underdeveloped countries attempt to cut costs to gain a price advantage, many workers in these countries face low pay, substandard working conditions and even forced labor and abusive child labor. Yet the WTO states that it does not consider a manufacturer’s treatment of workers reason for countries to bar importation of that manufacturer's products. The WTO howe ver notes that developing countries insist any attempt to include working conditions in trade agreements is meant to end their cost advantage in the world market. This trade often contributes to environmental damage. An increase of corporate farms in developing countries tends to increase pesticide and energy use, and in turn host countries ignore costly environmental standards. The Global Development and Environmental Institute, however, find the environmental impact mixed. The WTO is criticized for not allowing barriers to imports based on inadequate environmental standards in countries where goods are produced (Richardson 76-9). Yet the WTO points to its ruling in the 1990s allowing a U.S. ban on shrimp imports because fishing methods threatened endangered sea turtles outside U.S. borders. The extent to which environmental standards should be considered in free trade is an ongoing debate within the WTO. The trade agreements tend to draw protests from the U.S. public as a result o f feared job loss to foreign countries with cheaper labor. Yet proponents of free trade say new agreements help to improve the economy on either side. There is no clear picture of whether the trade significantly affects U.S. employment levels, given all the economic forces that affect job rates. Proponents of free trade contend that even if the economies of developing nations improve under free trade, those economies are still too small to have any real effect on the U.S. economy and job market (Goldstein 21). Unions have strongly criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the United States, Mexico and Canada as critically harmful to workers and the U.S. economy. The AFL-CIO argues NAFTA has harmed consumers and workers thereby contributing to a loss of jobs and drop in income while strengthening the clout of multinational corporations. The unions contend that the increased capital mobility facilitated by free trade has hurt the environment and weakened gover nment regulations. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), reports that many economists agree NAFTA has caused some overall improvement in U.S. jobs but with harmful side effects. Free trade can cause turbulence in sectors of a domestic economy, such as long-established

Female Slavery Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Female Slavery - Essay Example While Female slaves were treated as sexual objects by their master as they were viewed as an item devoid of morals, bestowed the label of being 'promiscuous' and were given 'male' responsibilities at home and in the field, the treatment of male slaves were similarly cruel and debasing as they also suffered extreme and unjust pain and abuse in the hands of their owners which stemmed from the fact the slave-owners in the American South viewed their subjects as non-humans. According to the account of Deborah Gray White, author of the book "Female Slaves: Sex Roles and Status in Antebellum South." The female slaves did not did not play the conventional stereotyped female function as it was characterized in nineteenth century America, and in spite of how harshly most historians typecast women as subordinate or submissive in their duties in relation to slave men, it will be difficult to reconcile these roles with the realities in the plantation South. White wrote that, 1"The high degree of female cooperation, the ability of slave women to rank and order themselves, the independence women derived from the absence of property considerations in the conjugal relationship, 'abroad marriages,' and the female slave's ability to provide supplementary foodstuffs are factors which should not be ignored in consideration of the slave family " (28). White maintains that depictions of "female slaves" as 'full-time field-hands' are practically indistinguishable from the male slaves. White mentions the "full female hands," compelled to "slave" like "males," and suggests that 2"It is difficult, however, to say how often they did the same work, and it would be a mistake to say that there was no differentiation of field labor on Southern farms and plantations. The most common form of differentiation was that women hoed while men plowed." In addition, White's account of the slavery in the South upset and horrifies the readers as she enlightens them about the horrors and inequalities that slave women were compelled to deal with in her daily affairs.In her book, white tackles two of the most common misconceptions of female slavery: Jezebel and Mammy. The author swiftly reveals the that the stereotype that slave women were 'promiscuous', 'dirty' women with an unappeasable lust for her white master, is very deceiving. White further asserts that, 3"The choice put before many slave women was between miscegenation and the worst experiences that slavery had to offer. Not surprisingly, many chose the former." Consequently, the actuations of the slave woman yielding to the sexual advances of her white master resulted to her labeling as unchaste and immoral or a Jezebel. The second typecast tackled is that of mammy, the caring black woman who is concerned for the welfare of the white children.White, moreover, in great depth, describes the real lives and adversities that slave women faced everyday. According to White, although the female slaves' work in the fields was essential, her real worth was set in keeping the male slaves sexually fulfilled in order to reproduce more generations of slaves in the future. Consequently, almost all female slaves had families, but they were more disassociated compared to the families of the