Many would say that sweat shops and other forms of "unfair" labor are crimes of humanity for the way that the owners of the shops treat their employees.  Workers at shops and factories such as these face miniscule wages and terrible working conditions, but are these conditions not better than working as an underage sex slave?  Some have suggested that fair trade might be the solution to end unfair labor in third world countries, but this concept might present many worse problems than low wages and poor working conditions.  In fact, the implementation of a fair trade policy with countries that rely heavily on sweat shops could very well lead to a step in the wrong direction as it pertains to creating better jobs for the people of that country.


What fair trade actually does, is raise the floor price of a specific item, so that producers of that item are encouraged to produce more, and new producers are encouraged to join the market. In the short term, fair trade is a successful concept, workers get paid higher wages, and the demand for an item is being met with an increasing supply. However, it is the long run of fair trade that opponents of the policy fear. As the supply and demand scale begins to tip, there will be a surplus of the product, but no demand for it. This surplus beings to make prices drop, and the market begins to lose money. The Cato Institute's Brink Lindsey refers to fair trade as a "well intentioned, interventionist scheme... doomed to end in failure."


All that the failure of the fair trade scheme will bring is the reinforcement of other negative industries. As fair trade in its short successful run before it fails will cause a large number of sweatshops to close and thus just as Kristof stated in his passage that with out sweat shops the workers, usually kids will revert to other means of earning money. The most prevalent being that they will resort to becoming sex slaves. Now, it is understood that the fair trade system in no way is trying to cause this. However, this system when it fails, and fail it will, will have caused massive changes to the ways that undeveloped countries earn a living. Most of these changes for the worse such as the previously mentioned sex slave industry increase due to the closing of sweatshops. It is because of this that the fair trade system is not the solution to the problems of the worlds economies.