This essay asks what it is about the practice of trade that grounds duties of justice between states as trade partners. The answer advanced is that such duties are grounded in the dependence that trade generates. The essay puts forward four conditions that a plausible account of grounding in trade must meet: it must admit of degrees, explain the distinctly international character of trade justice, ground both procedural and distributive duties, and it must be a necessary feature of all trade (...) relationships which generate duties of justice. A dependence account of grounding meets all four conditions, and does so in an intuitively compelling way. While other accounts of what grounds duties of trade justice can meet some of the conditions, none can meet all of them. Relative to rival candidates, then, the dependence account provides a firmer foundation for the ongoing attempts to develop a comprehensive theory of trade justice. (shrink)

The article discusses the relation between the concepts of unfair trade, exploitation, and below-subsistence wages with regard to individual economic transactions. Starting from the common notion that exploitation involves some kind of unfair advantage taking, it asks how “unfair” is to be understood, and what it is that is taken advantage of in exploitative exchanges. On this basis it then explores a line of argument for grounding the claim that below-subsistence wages are exploitative, focusing on the condition of morally transformative (...) voluntary consent to transactions. By analyzing the structure of coercion with regard to threats, offers, and circumstances it comes to the conclusion that consent to an offer is morally non-transformative with regard to legitimizing the outcome of a transaction if the person giving the “consent” has only unacceptable options in absolute terms to choose from, since this reduces “consent” to a mere act of rationality devoid of any normative content. Accordingly, it argues that insofar as below-subsistence wages are unacceptable options in absolute terms, they are to be considered exploitative and an instance of unfair trade. (shrink)

Fair Trade is under fire. Some critics argue, for instance, that there is no obligation to purchase Fair Trade certified products and that doing so may even be counter-productive. Others worry that well-justified conceptions of what makes trade fair can conflict. Yet others suggest that the common arguments for Fair Trade cannot justify purchasing Fair Trade certified goods, in particular. This paper starts by sketching one common argument for Fair Trade and defends it against this last line of criticism. In (...) particular, it argues that we should purchase Fair Trade certified goods because doing so benefits the poor even though there are other ways to alleviate poverty. It then considers how other common arguments for Fair Trade fare in light of similar criticism and concludes that they may well succeed. (shrink)

This paper discusses the idea that trade – the practice of regularised exchange of goods or services between nation-states for mutual advantage under an orchestrated system of rules – can generate moral duties, duties that exist between only participants in the activity. It considers this idea across three duties often cited as duties of trade: duties not to harm; duties to provide certain basic goods; and duties to distribute benefits and burdens fairly. The paper argues that these three duties seem (...) unlikely contenders for duties thought in some sense to supervene on trade, the former two because they seem to exist regardless of the existence of trade and the latter because it seems to apply to a group more widely conceived than to be coherently thought centred on trade. It concludes that, at least across these three duties, it is more plausible to think that they are duties which, although possibly having relevance for how trade is conducted, do not emerge from the practice and are, rather, grounded elsewhere. (shrink)

Three perspectives on international trade are present in current debates. From the first perspective, trade is regarded as a set of individual transactions among consenting parties and considerations of fairness and justice barely feature, if at all. The second perspective underlines the importance of background structures for trade, maintained by states, which gives rise considerations of fairness and justice. One prominent version of this perspective, for example as defended by Aaron James, views all trading states as having in principle equal (...) claims to the gains from trade. A third perspective puts the focus on exploitation. In this special issue, Mathias Risse and Gabriel Wollner claim that the first perspective should be abandoned and that the type of approach that is instantiated by James fails. This article does not follow them in dismissing the second perspective in its entirety. It suggests that there is a different version of this perspective that is defensible and develops key elements of that version. In a second step, the article seeks to show that, even if there were no plausible account of fairly dividing gains from trade among states, fairness in trade would still generate demanding normative requirements – that can be and should be integrated into a theory of global justice. (shrink)