Comparative Advantage

1. Introduction

The purpose of this essay is to examine the trade policy and its impact on international trade of South Africa; this would be a speculative/ academic exercise. The focus here is on the broader trade policy, objectives, strategies and challenges that are faced by South Africa in an increasingly global and competitive world economy. The essay is mainly a reflective synthesis of work done by authors, but the main aim throughout is to gather lessons from South Africa’s past in order to designate the main trade issues of the future. This essay covers five main issues which are as follows: Firstly, the trade policy and its key objectives and strategies, secondly it identifies and highlights the key challenges of what happened to the international trade of South Africa since independence, thirdly, it also identifies what did SA achieved and did not achieved as part of trade policy, Lastly, it gives what need to done in order to improve the trade of South Africa. From this, a number of possible trade and trade policy scenarios are derived and described in the conclusion.

Since 1994, South Africa has been reinstated quickly in the global economy, with the contribution of imports and exports strong growing as a percentage of GDP. The economy has become more open, more productive and more oriented towards the outside. This setting is in part a response to internal and ends the country's trade and political isolation, but is also part of a global process of trade liberalization and economic integration, commonly called "globalization". The benefits of globalization are not distributed equally and that some industries and consumers have benefited from increased production and lower prices, others have lost more competitive foreign industries or lost their job. These trends are likely to continue. Tariffs and other trade protection will come down, exports and imports will increase, and there will be other costs and benefits of adjustment.

2. What is...