Article Title: Opinion | Can trade agreements be a friend to labour?

Article Summary

This is not a complicated article, however this article introduces you to the terminology of business and trade. The mention of various trade agreements should make you curious and make you run a quick Google search for these agreements. Understanding them gives you a chance to understand passages on these topics.

In this passage, the author primarily talks about how international trade agreements go light on labour standards and how the same is covered better in regional trade agreements. The author provides examples of these agreements are changing and highlights the positives of enhancing these labour standards (it has a major impact in developing countries). The author then highlights how despite these agreements, it all boils down to the implementation of labour standards in developing countries and how this might be easier said than done. In the last part of the passage, the author explains why it is important to apply enhanced labour standards.

Article Link: Click here to read the full article

Words to learn from this Article:

Preferential: Manifesting partiality

Explicit: Precisely and clearly communicated or readily observable; leaving nothing to implication

Protectionist: an advocate of the policy of shielding a country’s domestic industries from foreign competition by taxing imports.

Salutary: (especially with reference to something unwelcome or unpleasant) producing good effects; beneficial.

Precedent: An example that is used to justify similar occurrences at a later time

Asymmetries: (mathematics) a lack of symmetry

Anti-Dumping: An anti-dumping duty is a protectionist tariff that a domestic government imposes on foreign imports that it believes are priced below fair market value. Dumping is a process where a company exports a product at a price lower than the price it normally charges in its own home market.

Safeguard: Make safe

Adjunct: Something added to another thing but not an essential part of it