Wednesday, December 21, 2005

China-Thailand FTA

From the news, as Thai Deputy Commerce Minister said the Sino-Thai Free Trade Agreement would not put Thai trade balance into deficit.

I do not believe it. It did, and affected both the country's trade balance at the macro level and small farmers and businessmen at the micro-economy level.
For example, Thai orchards' owners are going broke with influx of surplus Chinese fruits. How can you survive if you were forced to sell Rambutan for 5 Baht (about US 12 Cents) a kilogram, for example.

There are known barriers inside China, e.g. the various localities, whatever they are called.

Thailand should do the same, setting up local regulations to support local farmers, for example. Look at a living eukaryotic cell, there are several membrane bound organelles which serve as various intracellular compartments. Those were aimed to increase local concentration of metabolites and some biochemicals in needed in some areas. Five hundred million years of evolution can not be wrong. Cells would die if there is no intracellular compartmentation. A country should be likewise in term of local products.

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