International Trade and Philippine Economic Growth

With the emergence of the concept of international trade, countries all over the world can exchange goods and services across their borders and this contributes to the greater economic wealth as well as mutual gains for both trading countries. Through trading internationally, countries can now import goods and services that they think that they are lacking in resources or supply and export those that they are good at producing as well as have specialization with. Moreover, through the increasing healthy competition of trading countries, this ignites them to innovate as well as leads them to focus the production of goods or services which they are best at to gain a greater degree of efficiency. Furthermore, this gives a wide variety of options for consumers to choose from with a cheaper price and thus, contributes to the higher demand of the product either foreign or domestic. In addition, it will enable countries to grow, develop and become economically powerful as well as promote diplomatic solutions to international problems. However, international trade also has disadvantages. There can be loss of jobs due to excessive specialization as well as innovation like for example in technology. Most of the workers will be no longer needed as robots and other machineries will do the work thus, affecting the manpower. Moreover,because of some trade barriers, it will block other countries from entering and will eventually lead to lower demand of the consumers for domestic products due to the increase in price. Therefore, barriers result in troubles and conflicts for countries as well as for its people.

    Despite that, in recent years, countries are continuously participating in international trading including the Philippines. With international trade, it balances the economy of the countries if the imports and exports of goods and services are fair enough and policies are agreed upon by both countries. However, in the case of the Philippines, the total trade is the smallest among the Asian countries. Also, based on the report, it is concerning that the country is more into importing rather than exporting in the past.  There is no balance in the trade situation of the Philippines as its trade deficit is much higher than its trade surplus. This means that it is not a good sign as the cost of the country's imports exceeds the value of exports. Moreover, there is more money coming out from the country due to these imports and is one of the reasons why the Philippines is having a difficult time to keep up with the wealth of other countries as their efforts are far behind due to the said deficits. There are still much more efforts for the country in order to increase the demand and decrease deficits. If this situation in the Philippines continues, the country will suffer and be submerged in debt in exchange to push the gross domestic product higher than its large and growing deficits. Therefore, it will be a long journey for the Philippines in order to balance its trade as well as attain full economic growth and success.