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Trade is the lifeblood of the global economy, but few would consider it a social good. Instead, our views on trade have polarized between two extremes: 'free trade' ideologues who regard trade as an end in itself, and 'protectionists' who view it as a destructive force to be contained. But there is another way to trade - one with the interests of people, not profit, at its heart.

In this visionary work Christian Felber, founder of the Economy for the Common Good movement, offers a dazzling new paradigm for the global trading order. Confronting the 'free trade religion' which has reigned since Adam Smith, Felber champions an alternative approach in which trade serves the wider interests of society, incorporating the key issues of our time: human rights, climate change, and the growing divide richer and poorer countries. He proposes the groundbreaking idea of an 'Ethical Trade Zone', founded on a principled approach to tariffs and trade policies, and built with international cooperation on trade, taxation and labour.

Penetrating and passionate, Christian Felber shows how this brave new economic world can be built democratically from the grassroots up, and how trading for good can be made a reality.

Trading for Good: How Global Trade Can be Made to Serve People Not Money

I. Introduction

Part 1. Origins and Critique of the Religion of Free Trade

Part 2. The Substantive Alternative: Ethical World Trade

1. Significance of Trade





1a) Trade is not an end but a means

1b) Alignment of world trade rules with the UN goals

1c) The UN as headquarters of international business law





2. For an Ethical Trade System within the United Nations



2a) Protecting the values and goals of the international community

2b) Infant industry policy and non-reciprocity between unequals

2c) Increasing the scope for democratic action

2d) Economic subsidiarity, autarky, regionalization and subsistence

3. A Pragmatic Alternative: The Common Good Balance Sheet





Part 3. The Procedural Alternative: Sovereign Democracy



1. The centrality of democracy

2. The democratic genesis of international (business) law

3. Encouraging examples

4. Questions for the trade convention