International agricultural trade questions.

The following are some of the policy instruments an importing or exporting country. Define and briefly give summary of the impacts of each to procuders, consumers, trade flows and the government.

1. Fixed import tariff
2. Fixed export subsidy
3. Voluntary export restraint
4. Import Quota

From trade seminars

1. Outline 5 advantages of regional integrations such as SADC, COMESA, EAC, ECOWAS in Africa.
2. Food quality, food safety and phytosanitary regulations of developed countries may affect the agriculture sectors of developing countries like Tanzanian. Briefly outline three points and describe how.

A country will always export goods in which it has a comparative advantage and may or may not produce only that good.

The law of comparative advantage is based on differences in the opportunity costs of production between countries. Acountry with higher opportunity cost of producing a good will export to a country with low opportunity cost of producing that good.

If a country import oranges , then producers of oranges in that country will definitely gain from international trade in oranges.

When Tanzania started to export maize to Zambia in increasing quantities, South African maize exports fell, this shows that some countries may be made absolutely worse off through international trade.

As long as the world price of a commodity is below the home country`s equilibrium price there are  potentials for some exports to the rest of the world.

As a nation always there is a positive gain from trade but some groups in the nation are either worse off or better off.

No country can have comparative advantage on everything

The basis for trade between nations is the differences in input prices and relative productivity of inputs and these differences do affect the price of output.