The Globalisation of Trade - Literature review Example

Starbuck was one American company that had coffee shops virtually in every corner of America before the introduction of globalization. Since their operations were saturated in America, they struggled a lot to find enough space in America for expansion. Globalization helped them to expand their operations to overseas countries. In short, globalization helped international or cross-cultural trade to increase a lot.

Globalization of trade brought many opportunities and challenges. Some people argue that international trade helped countries to attract more foreign direct investments so that their economy started growing rapidly. They cite India and China-like countries as examples to show how well a country can utilize globalization opportunities. In fact, China opposed the “global economic order, political order and the major global institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank before the reforms started in China” (Overholt, 2005, p.3). However, they quickly realized the possibilities of global trade and globalization.

 It should be noted that these two most heavily populated countries in the world have been struggling for growth before the introduction of globalization. Their huge population size was a curse or barrier in front of their struggle for growth. However, globalization helped these countries to convert this population barrier into a blessing. In other words, these countries are currently the providers of manpower for the international market in which manpower shortage is a big problem. 

“During 1997–2005, China’s average annual growth rate in real GDP was 8.9%. During the forecast period of 2005–2010, it was assumed that the PRC continued its historical growth trend of 8.9% per year” (Mai et al, 2010, p.5). Moreover, “the PRC’s exports increase by about 46%and imports by about 45% relative to their respective baseline levels in 2010”(Mai et al, 2010, p.7). According to Albert Keidel (2008), China’s economy will surpass that of the United States by 2035 and be twice its size by the midcentury (Keidel, 2008). Indian economy also showed similar trends during the last few decades as a result of globalization of trade. 

The globalization of trade has assured the place of multi-national. It has been suggested that the role of such firms is to generate wealth, create work and raise the standard of living in the countries in which they operate. However, critics of globalization suggest that multi-national companies often exploit physical resources and take advantage of labor in countries where legal requirements may be less stringent than in their own countries. This paper critically discusses this statement providing arguments for and against the globalization of trade, taking India and China as major examples.

Overview of economic growth in India and China

It is often said that global wealth is currently shifting from the less heavily populated American and European regions to the more heavily populated Asian region because of globalization. The above argument seems to be correct when one would consider the economic statuses of India and China before the introduction of globalization. The standard of living and per capita income of Indians and Chinese people have increased a lot in the past few decades. Moreover, unemployment problems in these countries were come down a lot in the recent past. It should be noted that international companies are looking towards India and China when they think about their expansion opportunities.