Danielle Alexandra Gallegos Heredia

Labour and environmental regulation in international trade

1. Give your opinion about the importance of these topics in international trade.

2. Explain why companies have the responsability to work on these issues in their
international trade process.

3. Explain in your own words the meaning of "race to the bottom" and give an example

1. About labour is important to highlight the conditions under which workers work because
looking at what’s happening in Bangladesh we can perceive that some conditions are unfair
and only the enterprice gets benefit of these bad conditions of labour. The big entreprices
sell the clothes at a very low cost but at what cost? Having people who suffer in their
factories and that occasionally can eat fish or meat. These could be the worst conditions for
employes but because these great enterprises contribute to the economy of a lot of
countries, nobody does anything. In terms of environmental regulation there are divided
opinios because if we open the comerce, technologies could provide ways to improve the
environment but also the factories could affect the climate change because of chemicals and
waste, but in my opinion I think that there should be better measures for the environment.

2. Due to this expansion of the economy and different agreements there are environmental
agreements too, sometimes these are simililar between developed and developing countries.
If the intetion of the company is to trade internationally it is an obligation to fulfill all the
measures that agreements have certified in order to get permission to export. This
conditions ensure the environment health and keep all the procedures in a secure way in
order to continue the supply chain.

3. Race to the bottom is literally as it says a race to reach the bottom, but what’s the
bottom? It is the lowest wages and the worst conditions that countries or enterprices can
offer to it’s employes, for example as we saw in the videos it can be in Bangladesh where
enterprices as H&M and Zara have their employes in factories that are poor in everyway
and pay them the lowest wages, some of them get a dollar each day.