Article on campus fair trade initiative mistitled

There's an important correction I’d like to make in the article titled “Just Coffee initiative supports grassroots free trade” (4.27.07). The headline indicates that our group is working to promote “free trade” while it should read “fair trade.” While these terms sound similar, they are almost exactly opposite. Free trade is a system under which, ideally, goods travel across international boundaries without protectionist tariffs or taxes. What it has come to mean in the past several decades, as neoliberal reforms are instituted around the globe, is that government-subsidized U.S. goods have free access to markets in third-world countries, where they edge out domestically produced products (especially food), and eventually put local farmers out of business. Neo-liberal free trade is one of the major causes of poverty in the third world, and is what we’re fighting against in supporting Just Coffee, which allows farmers to sell their products in a direct manner by skipping around exploitative practices in international trade. I’m concerned that the accidental use of “free trade” instead of “fair trade” might turn off potential allies to our project.
—Dylan Cate ’08