Free Trade should be Valued above protectionism

This debate is created purely to help me get ready for LD district. Thank you: UIL Spring 2011 Aff Free trade is efficient. Think about your own home. You could become self-sufficient and grow your own food and make your own furniture. But in most cases, you'll be better off spending the same amount of time working at whatever your best at, earning the money to buy these goods from experts at producing them, and having plenty left over for other goods. I ask you judge(s), "would you make something when you could buy it cheaper from outside your home"? The same applies to states. Alaska could spend lots of money on hothouses and grow oranges and banana's, and become self-sufficient. But it's far better for Alaska to specialize in oil, and use the wealth it gains to import oranges and bananas from Florida, which has the weather for it. What's true of state borders is just as true for international ones. It makes more sense for Americans to work in businesses in which they excel, and use this wealth to trade for goods in which other countries excel. Because of these reasons, today I must affirm the resolved: Free trade should be valued above protectionism. The standing value for today's debate is societal good, which is taking action for the good or advancement of a society as a whole. The criterion that shall be used in conjunction with societal good is the law of comparative advantage, which declares that every nation can improve its economic position by specialzing in the most efficient product lines available to them. I offer the following definitions for clarity in todays round: Free trade- an economic concept referring to the selling of products between countries without tariffs or other trade barriers. From American Heritage Protectionism- the economic policy of promoting favored domestic industries through the use of high tariffs and other regulations to discourage imports. From wordiq.com Contention 1: Free Trade promotes Peace and prosperity. Each person has a natural right to be free from arbitrary interference. Trade barriers disrupt voluntary and mutually beneficial activities. Protectionist policies reduce social harmony. Free trade breaks down barriers and the narrowness of provincialism, increases tolerance, and encourages friendly relations. Voluntary exchange counteracts nationalistic tendencies and replaces parochial attitudes with a global perspective. Trade requires one to understand the customs of the people he is trading with. Free trade is about peace. The removal of trade barriers would help the cause of universal peace and minimize conflicts around the world. When trade is free, consumers gain from the products of other countries and friendships and trust develop. Third world countries are helped through free trade. By removing our trade barriers, we can give private firms in third world nations easier access to our markets. If our government placed tariffs or trade barriers, then the countries would not be able to buy as much from us. Not only will the residents of these nations have the chance to develop new industries and expand their existing ones, their contract with peopke from free nations have the chance to develop new industries and expand their existing ones, their contract with people from free nations will promote the recognition of human rights and worker rights all over the world. Contention 2: Protectionism undermines prosperity. A: Protectionism weakens U.S industries Hiding behind trade barriers has not even proven to be good for the protected industries in the long run. Protected sectors tend to grow weaker and less competitive when shielded from competition. High trade barriers have not "saved" the domestic textile, apparel, footwear, and other low-end manufacturing secters from long-term decline and lost jobs. Higher domestic prices forced on consumers also dampen demand and promote substitutes, shrinking the domestic market. B: Protectionism ultimately leads to economic collapse. From a Washington Post article, Jan 28, 2009; Once an engine of global growth, trade is already set to decline by 2% in 2009, according to the World Bank. It could collapse all together if countries start shutting out one another's goods in a short-sighted effort to salvage domestic industries. The United States started one such trade war in 1930, when it enacted a tariff increase that prompted European retaliation-thus helping turn a bad recession into the Great Depression. Better to learn from this history than repeat it. Contention 3: Free Trade minimizes threats to World problems. A. Poverty is the main cause of destruction. Unfortunately, not every nation can afford to protect the enviroment in the ways that the United States does. According to John A. Charles at Cascade Policy Institute. " A recent report by the World Trade Organization reinforces these points. The report concludes: One reason why enviromental protection is lagging in many countries is low incomes. Countries that live on the margin may simply not be able to afford to set aside resources for pollution abatements. If poverty is the core of the problem, economic growth will be part of the solution". These countries don't have the money to protect the enviroment and they don't have the technology to know that they are destroying the enviroment. Not to mention the growing population of these countries is polluting large amounts of water and land because of human waste. B. Free Trade offers the superior solution to Poverty From Daniel Griswold at Cato Institute. "How do we expect hundreds of millions of people to pull themselves out of poverty if we do not allow them access to global Markets? It is morally and economically incoherent to denounce global poverty and sweatshops one moment and to denounce imports from and foreign investment to the very same countries where the poor people actually live." We cannot continue to let countries limit trade like they do if we want any sort of future for ourselves and our children. From Douglas Irwin, Dartmouth College. "Countries that restricted foreign trade and investment may have avoided foreign exploitation, but remained desperately poor nonetheless. Meanwhile, international trade created opportunities that in fact promoted development and reduced poverty. Many countries that encourage trade did not remain stuck producing just raw materials, but began exporting an increasing array of labor-intensive manufactured goods." If these countries opened their trade to all nations and allowed foreign exploitation, it would actually benefit these countries economically and allow them to stand up on their feet and start to contribute large quantities of money to environmental protection, which leads to my next point. C. Enviromental threats are best adressed through poverty reduction From Bjorn Lomborg, political science, University of Aarhus, Denmark. "We have grown to believe that we are faced with an inescapable choice between higher economic welfare and a greener environment. But, Surprisingly…environmental development ofter stems from economic development—only when we get sufficiently rich can we afford the relative luxury of caring about the environment" The priority of the rich is to secure their future and the main threat to their future is the destruction of the environment. This is why people with little economic worries would help the poor by allowing free trade.