The Role of International Trade-Morocco

This week, our subcommittee country is Morocco. And we found some information about Morocco. As we know that Morocco locates on North Africa, territorial area is 710,000 square kilometers and a population is 32 millions. Moroccan GDP was $ 91.7 billion, $ 2,839 per capita in 2010. Economic growth rate was 3.2 %, the inflation rate was 1.4%. And we can say that Morocco is the emerging economic. Even they have ample phosphate ore; they still rely on import and export for their trade in recent years.

Morocco exports and imports most of its goods from the European Union, with France being its largest trade partner, providing one-fifth of total imports and accounting for one-quarter of exports. Spain comes in second place, followed by the United States, Italy, and Saudi Arabia. Moreover, Morocco signed some many FTA with different countries in the world. Also they have good cooperation relationship with China. Because France has dominated Morocco before, France is their biggest foreign direct investor.

In my opinion, Morocco really has many comparative advantages. They have ample nature resources and have many trade partners in the different types, like USA, China, UN, and Arabic, which are really big markets in the world. In addition, I think they not only have geographic location, but also language talents in advance. Most Moroccan can speak more than 3 languages, which is really helps them to have international trade. And I am really surprise that Morocco is a really potential country in the world. 

US-South Korea Trade Agreements’ impact on Taiwan

USA and South Korea sign trade agreement and effective on March 15, 2012. The agreement will promote the further integration of the US and Korea economies and enhance the competitiveness of US businesses in the world’s 12^th large economy. They reduce their trade barrier and create more job opportunities to domestic people. However they also bring some barrier to their neighborhood, like my country, Taiwan.

South Korea is one of the major competitors of Taiwan in the international arena, and the United States is Taiwan's third largest export; therefore, US-South Korea FTA has some impact on Taiwan. According the survey of Taiwan Institute of Economic Research, the real GDP of Taiwan will decrease 0.04%, total export will decrease 0.06%, total import will decrease 0.09%, and trade balance will reduce $ 22 million. All these numbers show the impact to Taiwan’s internal trade.

Export structure to USA of Taiwan is similar with South Korea, 70% concentrate on information and electronic, mechanical products and automotive-related production. While the FTA effective, Taiwan will have to pay higher tariffs, relative to South Korea. Taiwan's textile industry also took a hit with US-South Korea FTA.

Faced with the impact of the US-South Korea trade agreement on Taiwan, the Taiwan government should quickly make a policy response. And the government of Taiwan try to deal with the problem from impact, Including actively promote Taiwan and the United States signed a trade agreement, promote Taiwan to join the TPP, explore other emerging markets, and assist industrial upgrading and transformation.

Helping Developing Countries Policies

In the class, some classmates discussed the Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations”. I have kind of same opinion with it. I think the trade of world should be open and free; then every nation can get their biggest profits by international trade. Moreover, world’s economics is not zero-sum game. I think the world’s economics is no limit; nations can get more profits via free trade.

Why is it so important for developing nations to be involved in trade, and what institutions and policies exist to help developing nations? I think that developing nations have some advantage, such as labors and raw material, is developed nation don’t have. In these reasons, that developed nations help developing nations to trade widely without barriers is very important. So the WTO has special program to help developing nations, such as IMF, World Bank, and GSP. All these organization’s goal is helping developing nations. They help developing members to improve their skill of produce and build schools and hospitals. They believe stable economics is the first factor for developing nations to trade widely.

Some critics mention that free trade is not all-win things. Trade liberalization not only affects the allocation of resources of the world, but also affected the rapid development of international trade, the rapid development of international trade; promote the development and deepening of international division of labor and exchange. Although the benefits of free trade, many development economists from the reality of the country's economic development, but that free trade does not necessarily conducive to the economic development of developing countries. The imbalance and inequality of the development process, lead to the development countries facing deteriorating terms of trade, trade preference erosion and other issues; coupled with the long-term decline and short-term fluctuations caused by the impact of the international raw material prices. Also tariff protection and subsidy policies of developed nations are dependent on primary commodities in developing countries occurrence of the phenomenon of international payments imbalances. This complex issue makes the developing countries in the long-term disadvantaged position due to the process of trade liberalization.

However, in my opinion, I think that decrease the barriers of trade and nations can focus on the comparative advantage products that can help all nations to be globalization.