Grand and explosive development of telecommunications and the innovations in transportation have given rise to a new stage in international trade as it occurred previously with the discovery of petroleum and even
earlier with mineral carbon and the steam engine. Nowadays, the trade exchange process has not only speeded up but it also incorporates new elements such as financial flows, investment flows, technological media and intellectual property. These manifestations have had an impact on almost every part of the world and have coined the word “globalization” as a recent, unavoidable and determining phenomenon.
However, such generalizing and omnipresent purpose is not recent. The attempt to dominate the world and to embrace it culturally is an old attempt since peoples and states have opened new routes, have discovered new spaces and have conquered other realities. Perhaps, the travels of Marco Polo were one of the few examples of the Pacific exchange; whereas the actions of the Roman, Spanish, Portuguese and English empires and other European kingdoms attempted to dominate the new estates and establish exclusive commercial and economic relationships and cultural points of reference. The originality of this new globalization lies in its economic aspect which leads to a series of new demands and pressures from industrialized countries, expressed by an increasing protectionism and para-tariff barriers which affect directly Latin American countries. Its most singular characteristic is its pursuit of standardization which is presented as a random process to the system of values and the cultural survival of people and nations.
Paradoxically, the convenient exchange has confronted people’s cultures and legal systems. Nonetheless, the biggest concern is that such situation was created with models not yet defined by law or international economy since aspects such as subventions, direct foreign investment, export of services, non-traditional products, dumping, international customs, amongst others, have reached the status of international trade categories without existing an accurate concept of each one of them. This is an advantage for industrialized nations over developing countries which do not have conditions to articulate or question such new models.
One of the most recurring postures in university classes and business and financial forums is to assume that trade and investment have eradicated boundaries; thus, peoples have lost their rights to exert sovereignty not only over politics but also over their cultural heritage understood as the territory, nation, language, forms of social organization, business structures and models of direction as well as knowledge, beliefs, religion and values which provide cohesion to people within an specific geographical space.
We address this work starting from this general idea and our main objective is to determine the structure and characteristics of a process in which the exchange of goods and services together with investment, technology and financial flows create concrete cultural and legal forms or alter those existing. Likewise, we attempt to determine the way in which such commercial power and investment have an impact on recipient countries. To this end, we start from the following questions: Is there an evolutionary process of international trade which starting from raw materials exports can reach political interference? Are there any stages which countries gradually have to reach in order to conquer or dominate new markets?
To answer those questions, we propose a theory which explains how international trade evolves and in which way countries, companies and the different other organizations act towards foreign trade development. Based on this theory, we analyze the evolution of exports, particularly in Latin America and the process of international trade from a particular perspective of what this concatenated cycle of the action of a country is in foreign markets. We attempt to develop our hypothesis considering the importance of the impact of each one of the stages of international trade on culture and on the law of recipient countries and purchasers of goods and services as well as the way in which the unmanageable escalation of global trade is able to lead to cultural impact and political interference, affecting the culture of recipient or host countries or generating conflictive situations when they lack an integral strategic plan. Similarly, we expose the different answers that law has given to each of the stages of international trade allowing the interaction of economic agents in different legal systems.
In each one of the nine chapters in which this book is divided, we aim to give an answer to the questions which have encouraged this research. First of all, a new theory which we call evolutionary theory of international trade is outlined and its foundations are exposed; then from Chapter II and in each one of the following chapters, we explain the seven stages in which we consider that such evolutionary process takes place, to finally propose a comprehensive plan which avoids the conflict between international market agents.
Chapter I is the foundation and originality of the book because it includes the evolutionary theory of international trade. Accordingly, it is possible to read Chapter I and read directly Chapter IX in order to understand the sense and purpose of this work since the first chapter expose the fundamental thesis and that last includes the national guidelines and policies that countries must structure to avoid that the beneficial action of the commercial, financial and technological exchange become breeding grounds for conflicts and disagreements between societies and states. Chapter II to Chapter VIII explain and give details of the characteristics of each one of the seven stages of the process of international trade so that they can be read independently to deepen the knowledge of the stages of world trade. In each one of them, there is a description regarding the content and disagreements of the seller countries against buyer countries, regarding investors against host or recipient nations, regarding technology holders against users.
It is true that the theory proposes an interpretation of the reality of international trade which is illustrated with examples of markets; however, it takes into account the Latin American situation showing how, in fact, this theory is valid even in a scenario which is understood as more homogeneous and in which integration would be more rapidly feasible. Indeed, what consolidates this theory are Latin American countries themselves, which in spite of their common roots, pass by – sometimes with arrogance – the different stages of international trade supporting the theory of this work.
The purpose and spirit, which have encouraged this long interruption of intellectual creation since for the first time in 1997 we elaborated the preliminary outline of this theory in the “Ius et Veritas” Journal reiterated the following year in the International Political Magazine (“Revista de Política Internacional”), is the interpretation of the new reality of international trade and the way how the recent actors have an impact on culture and the law, interfering even in politics, thus creating scenarios of possible conflicts. However, it also outlines the guidelines of policies which our countries must design in order to avoid that those potential controversies spoil the benefits of commercial exchange.
Therefore, we present this work to the academic community, to the private sector of our economies and the state structures of our countries which are part of – without a doubt – that tripod over which our foreign trade is supported to show how trade evolves and which measures must be designed to achieve the profitability of this action and in order to rebalance the asymmetries imposed by the political power and privileged possession of knowledge which have altered a pacific world of coexistence disregarding our heart and dignity. Globalization or cosmopolitan modernity have not succeeded in holding back
culture and nationalistic sentiments, in some cases, they have even strengthened and sometimes push them to a harmful and reprehensible overflow. The fully understanding that trade evolves constantly towards levels of greater power will allow having a comprehensive idea of the real scope of international trade.