Spécialistes du commerce international et de la mondialisation économique, Jagdish Bhagwati se montre sceptique vis-à-vis du commerce équitable:
The “fair trade” lobbying, on the other hand, is something that I find ill-advised. Oxfam and other charities use the phrase to argue that we should subsidize the producers so as to give them a “just” price that exceeds the market price. But we have two serious problems here. This phrase has been long used in United States discourse as a code word for protectionism. By bringing all kinds of extraneous issues as preconditions for freer trade, the proponents of so-called “fair trade” essentially mask their protectionism in the language of “fairness”, a tactic that has been exposed and denounced for decades in the U.S. but which now is in danger of being legitimated by the witless adoption of the “fair trade” terminology for altruism. Next, if the “fair trade” lobbies want to bamboozle us into being altruistic by channeling subsidies to the producers of commodities such as coffee designated as “fair trade” coffee, we then must confront the fact that many of us prefer to direct our altruism to the poor countries instead in myriad other ways which we consider to be both more desirable and even more efficacious.
L'hebdo The Economist est du même avis:
The standard economic argument against Fairtrade goes like this: the low price of commodities such as coffee is due to overproduction, and ought to be a signal to producers to switch to growing other crops. Paying a guaranteed Fairtrade premium—in effect, a subsidy—both prevents this signal from getting through and, by raising the average price paid for coffee, encourages more producers to enter the market. This then drives down the price of non-Fairtrade coffee even further, making non-Fairtrade farmers poorer. (...)Guaranteeing a minimum price also means there is no incentive to improve quality (...)
|