All’s fair in free trade and globalisation, says the World Trade Organisation.  Gobar Times discovers 284,000 child slaves in the cocoa plantations of West Africa; a losing battle fought by Caribbean banana growers with US companies; and the fact that the richest one-fifth of the world’s population has an income 74 times higher than the poorest one-fifth. Fair?

Robert McDonald, an honest law-abiding citizen of an industrialised country, puts on his jogging shoes, switches on his portable CD player, and jogs down the neighbourhood. On his way back, he buys a bar of chocolate from the grocer. Tired after the exercise, he makes himself a nice glass of cold coffee, has a banana, sits in front of the computer and plays some games. His mobile phone rings. "Hello, Bob here".

Hello. In the last one hour Bob used at least six items produced by people in developing countries. The unprocessed coffee came from Asia, Latin America, Africa or the Caribbean. The shoes were stiched in Vietnam. The computer was assembled in Malaysia. The cocoa for the chocolate came from West Africa.

The trading system, present since the beginning of history, is said to be an excellent thing because it allows countries to export excess products and import deficit products. Your country might be producing tonnes of sugar (that it does not need) while it does not produce any rice at all (that it needs). The trading system is good also because it brings revenue to a country. Perhaps in this process, Bob also helps a low-income country by buying things made there.

Perhaps. But free trade dictates there should be no rules and regulations. And ‘no rules’ usually means survival of the fittest. In the case of trade, it means survival and prosperity of the most powerful and the richest.

For example, when Bob buys a banana in the US or Germany, it is most likely that it had been grown in Latin America by huge US-based companies. These companies are able to produce bananas on a large scale and sell them very cheap. Dollar Bananas. On the other hand, the economies of most of the small Caribbean countries depend on bananas. These countries are losing their market everyday because they cannot compete with 'dollar bananas' in quantity, quality or price. So, each time Bob buys a banana, he is actually harming (and hurting) the small Caribbean farmer. And this is just the beginning of the story...