A Plea for Free Trade

The anthology „A Plea for Free Trade” offers solid facts and aims to add objectiveness to the emotional debate on globalisation. It opposes the argument that trade profits can only be made if something is taken away from someone on the other side. The individual essays highlight different aspects:

In the first chapter, „Freedom increases prosperity – all over the world”, Prof. Luca Rebeggiani shows the clear correlation between the liberalisation of economies and their prosperity. He demonstrates that this applies in particular to poor countries andlow-income groups.

In the second chapter, Prof. Heribert Dieter highlights that free trade requires rules. It becomes clear here that the benefits of globalization increase enormously through good rules and that weaker actors particularly benefit from these rules.

In the third chapter, Prof. Galina Kolev investigates the question of whether free trade harms the environment. She comes to the conclusion that this clear correlation does not exist, although it is often axiomatically assumed in the public debate.

In the fourth chapter, Dr Axel Berger shows that attempting to define rules for sustainability within the framework of trade partnerships does work. With this publication, the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V., with its orientation towards the social market economy, would like to make a contribution to objectifying the debate on the subject of „globalisation”.

Read the entire publication on free trade here as a PDF.