4 ms·
> If there is one thing that drives EU legislation ideas, it is the convergence towards open and common, market-wide standards. This reduces the barriers to ent
by rrwo 4y ago
> If there is one thing that drives EU legislation ideas, it is the convergence towards open and common, market-wide standards. This reduces the barriers to entry for small players and leads to more innovation as a result.
Too many people don't understand that trade agreements are about common standards and accountability.
There is a lot of noise about EU regulations made by people who are stuck in 18th century mindsets about trade and who fancy themselves as "free traders".
- mschuster91 4y ago> Too many people don't understand that trade agreements are about common standards and accountability. Unfortunately, trade agreements can also end up being abused to enable price dumping. Yes, consumers may enjoy lower prices for goods, but if the cost is domestic industry being completely devastated or human rights being violated at large scale (e.g. children being enslaved in questionably legal mining operations or factories), is it worth it? Most trade agreements at the time have almost no "equal standards" clause for manufacturing. Stuff like toxic materials (e.g. RoHS) is regulated, but lower work standards - minimum wages, child labor prevention, slavery prevention, fire codes (e.g. the horrible fires that regularly happen in Bangladesh [1]), disposal of waste, CO2 emissions - are not. The result of that non-regulation is that nations like China, India or Vietnam flood European and US markets with goods that are only cheap (compared to domestic products) because the environment and the workers get exploited. We outsource our dirty industry. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Dhaka_garment_factory_fire#Related_occurrences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Dhaka_garment_factory_fir...