ESSAY Theme: “International labor division”
The international division of labor was an achievement of the spirit of Liberalism. International trade has to some extent existed from the oldest times. There was a regular commerce in some commodities the production of which was limited to special geographical conditions. There was occasional trade when some extraordinary event offered unusual opportunities. But however important the civilizations consequences of this international traffic were and however important its amount was when compared with the technical difficulties that transport had to overcome, the role played by it in supplying the wants of the markets was negligible. A very small part only of the common man's daily consumption was dependent on foreign produce. The commodities imported might for the most part be regarded as luxury goods, as people could do without them without suffering too great privation. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Napoleon's continental blockade even if it had been strictly enforced would not have had any noteworthy consequences on the daily consumption of the masses in Central Europe. In those days for the ordinary man's supply of even sugar (of course, in those days cane sugar only) and cotton were luxuries.
Globalization has led to the new international division of labor (NIDL) where production processes are no longer located in the national economies. In the recent past production processes are being shifted from industrial countries to the less industrialized countries. Many global corporations have relocated their production processes from developed economies such as Japan, US, UK, Germany and other developed countries to less developed countries such as Asian, Latin America and African countries. This industrial shift is driven by search for locations that are cheap for assembling and