Tuesday, November 18, 2014

U.S historical “Embargo” in 1807 Vs. U.S opened Japan’s Market in 1854




In class, we talked about how autarky is different from free trade market and how large the gains are from trade. An embargo is when all export systems shut down.  In 1807 to 1809 Thomas Jefferson imposed an embargo during the war between Britain and France. Still U.S prevents trade from several countries. During this period U.S. exports fell from $49 million to $9million, especially products like cotton, flour, tobacco, and rice. This is loss for the U.S. economy. On the other hand, in 1854, United States forced Japan to open up their trade. Due to this event Japan’s economy developed quickly.

I found some good embargo examples. As we learned, there is an embargo between U.S and Cuba. Most communist countries are against American government. Powerful countries use some widget to cut off goods and service for long times in order to change political or economic trade. For example, Cuba can’t reach American goods for over 50years.


In my opinion, embargo and forcing to open the market is governmental powerful strategies. Nowadays the global economy has more conflict, but is also getting bigger and powerful through some institutions as WTO. 

At the same time, the United States and other powerful countries wanted to have free trade with Korea, but Korean government refused. They wanted to keep national isolation or exclude foreigners because they wanted to keep their power and kingdom. Around 1910, the Korean government failed and all powerful countries controlled and took away Korean resources. The most powerful control was Japanese cruelty oppression. In this situation the trade was unequal. There is no give and take, only one side took away everything. Therefore, all this is not right between embargo and opened market by power ruled but there is also chance to change to develop like Japan did. The most important is the government decision when this happens. The Korean government rejected change when this happened, so Korea lost everything for 50years.  If would have been better for Korea to participate in right trade.

 

2 comments:

  1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7hZjNO3I-Q

    The above link leads to a video from the comedy news show Last Week Tonight. The show did a segment on America's only remaining embargo, the Cuban Embargo. The show really lays out all of the social and political reasons for ending the embargo, and really hammers home the point that the embargo has failed to oust the communist regime in Cuba. For this reason I think it is clear that it would be in the United State's favor to end the embargo. Opening up trade with Cuba would not only provide gains to Cuba, but to the US as well, and seeing as the embargo is not effective at achieving its goal the US may as well end it and enjoy what gains it can.

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  2. In response to Michael, seeing that obesity has already made its presence known ( just look around a local walmart) the embargo on Cuba, a country that exports pure sugar, would do very little to worsen that problem in fact a may even help health issues as high fructose corn syrup in some studies has proven to be worse for the body than pure sugar itself. Further, as you aforementioned, opening trade to Cuba would bring net gains to both regions; however, let's see how the struggle with repealing a law compares to the ease of letting it live, however unnecessary.

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