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The current basis for international trade fails to fully eradicate poverty, making necessary a wider view of fair trade. Its success so far leaves it well-placed to tackle the pricing manipulations that strip profits and tax revenue from the poorest countries.

What is the role of tax havens in international trade? Are multinational companies meeting their responsibilities in developing countries? Which of the world’s poorest countries could nearly double its GDP if it received a fairer price for its exports?

The Fairtrade movement has been enormously successful in raising awareness of the failure of international trade to make a full contribution to poverty eradication, and in starting to deliver fairer prices to companies and workers in the developing world. Over recent years, there has been a growing realisation that international trade, as currently organised, fails to deliver a fair price to developing countries at the national level too. This talk will explore why that is, consider the questions above and explain how some simple transparency measures could change things. The success of Fairtrade so far, through the commitment of supporters and consumers, leaves it well-placed to take on the next challenge - the pricing manipulations that strip profits and tax revenue from the poorest countries.

Alex Cobham is Chief Policy Adviser to Christian Aid, one of the UK’s leading development NGOs which works in more than forty of the world’s poorest countries. Christian Aid is committed to the goal of poverty eradication and has long worked for a more just international trade system; in 1992 it was one of the founding organisations of the UK’s Fairtrade Foundation.  Alex is a development economist who researched and taught at the University of Oxford in various roles from 1999-2007, before joining Christian Aid. His main research interests include inequality, taxation and international financial flows.