Digging into Past Policies to Prepare for the Free Trade Future

The structural-change policies adopted in recent years as part of the trend towards globalization have accelerated the liberalization of world trade through the creation of trade zones, free-trade agreements and common markets. This has had strong effects on national economies, the agents involved in such economies and international trade flows… From UNIFEM’s report “NAFTA’s Impact on the Female Work Force in Mexico”

As an employee of a donor funded organization, the sway that funders hold over organizations often seems daunting. Non-profits without clear goals and objectives, and a strategy to obtain those goals, risk getting caught up in the funding game where priorities are deferred to dollars. Even organizations that have defined ideas of their future must put aside those goals due to a lack of funding in a certain geographic region, sector or timeframe. This was recently brought to my attention after the current US administration announced an integration of the goals and objectives of the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). These two departments, especially USAID, are key players in the development field and have much influence on how, where and when American development organizations work. The alliance of the State Department’s foreign policy and USAID’s resource allocation, highlighted, for me, the way which government policies can affect every facet of a nation’s economy. Now, this point may seem obvious but it started me on a path to uncover ...