International trade
Almost every kind of product can be found in the international market, for example: food, clothes, spare parts, oil, jewellery, wine, stocks, currencies, and water.
Advanced technology (including transportation), globalization, industrialization, outsourcing and multinational corporations have major impacts on the international trade systems.
This is due to the fact that cross-border trade typically incurs additional costs such as explicit tariffs as well as explicit or implicit non-tariff barriers such as time costs (due to border delays), language and cultural differences, product safety, the legal system, and so on.
This tradition was preceded by a local observance of "Foreign Trade Week" by the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce that originated in 1927 as an expansion of United States National Maritime Day.
[21] A 2016 study found that local employment and total labor income in both manufacturing and nonmanufacturing were negatively affected by rising exposure to imports.
[citation needed] A systematic, and possibly first large-scale, cross-sectoral analysis of water, energy and land in security in 189 countries that links total and sectorial consumption to sources showed that countries and sectors are highly exposed to over-exploited, insecure, and degraded such resources with economic globalization having decreased security of global supply chains.
While millions were making a livelihood through this small-scale mining, governments of Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia complained about the increase in illegal production and gold smuggling.
Investigative reports based on Africa's export data revealed that gold in large quantities is smuggled out of the country[clarification needed] through the United Arab Emirates, without any taxes being paid to the producing states.
[28] In July 2020, a report by Swissaid highlighted that the Dubai-based precious metal refining firms, including Kaloti Jewellery International Group and Trust One Financial Services (T1FS), received most of their gold from poor African states like Sudan.
The gold mines in Sudan were seldom under the militias[clarification needed] involved in war crimes and human rights abuses.
The Swissaid report also highlighted that the illicit gold coming into Dubai from Africa is imported in large quantities by the world's largest refinery in Switzerland, Valcambi.
[29] [30] Another report in March 2022 revealed the contradiction between the lucrative gold trade of West African countries and the illicit dealings.
Like Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ghana and other states, discrepancies were recorded between the gold production in Mali and its trade with Dubai, UAE.
