The pros and cons of global trade perhaps have never been so starkly contrasted than this week.
On Monday, the National Retail Federation and other trade groups released a report they commissioned that articulates how the United States benefits from imported goods.
A few days later, Time magazine publishes this searing photo of two workers who perished after a building hosting apparel factories collapsed in Bangladesh, killing over 800 people.
In many ways, these two publications vividly demonstrates the paradoxical world of international economics: the benefits of low cost clothing in one country can often come at the expense of another country.
Bangladesh is a poor country in southeast Asia that's home to a multi-billion apparel industry where low cost workers make clothing for the world's top retailers, including Wal-Mart, The Gap, and Minneapolis-based Target Corp.
By using low cost suppliers in Bangladesh and other countries in Asia and Latin America, Americans enjoy cheap prices which allow us to afford a better lifestyle, or says the NRF report:
"Imports are not the bogeyman some Americans believe them to be. On the contrary, they benefit our economy in a number of ways. They provide consumers of all income brackets with a greater variety of goods at lower prices. They constrain inflation. They encourage manufacturers to constantly improve quality and innovate while providing them with needed inputs at lower prices…It is time to give imports the credit they deserve."
Fair enough. But the report conspicuously omits how the United States' appetite for imported goods impacts the countries whose citizens produce them.
