How do rich countries create trade obstacles?

Related pages: Trade Matters homepage | Millennium Development Goal 8: Aid, trade, growth and global partnership

Rich countries have also created obstacles designed to bar imports from developing countries with a natural advantage in producing agricultural goods. These barriers include high ‘tariffs’– taxes charged at the border on imported goods.

For goods imported into the EU or US, these can be as high as three times the price of the product itself. For example, fruit and nuts imported into the US can have a tax of 200% slapped on them, and for meat brought into the EU this can be as much as 300%. People in Japan or Korea buying imported rice may pay a tax of 10 times the original price of the rice.

These tariffs are there to protect producers of, say, meat, rice, or nuts in rich countries by keeping cheaper alternatives grown in developing countries off the supermarket shelves.

And so farmers in poorer countries are left out in the cold.

This case study is part of Trade Matters

Other links to stories about trade and tariffs

• Speech by Hilary Benn: How can we get trade justice? (June, 2005)
• When is a sardine not a sardine? (case study)
• MakePovertyHistory campaign on trade