Whilst many regulations cannot ensure total fairness in trade, they can promote fairer trade

Dumping

• Regulations on trade prevents dumping: when a country or company exports a product at a price that is lower in the foreign importing market than the price in the exporter's domestic market.
• This allows them to flood the market with product prices that are not equivalent to the fair market value.
• Countries can protect their domestic producers from dumping by using regulations such as tariffs and quotas against imported goods.
• Without this, trade at the fair market value is threatened and thus is fair trade in general.

Anti-discrimination Measures

• WTO law creates anti-discrimination measures, which make it illegal for countries to discriminate against each other in trade.
• This means they cannot accept the same product from one country and refuse it from another without a satisfactory basis, preventing the unfair politicization of trade.

Labour Rights

• Countries can set certain requirements when trading with another.
• They set labour clauses that list the minimum commitments for the protection of human rights at work in order to sign free trade agreements.
• A growing number of FTAs, particularly those signed by Canada, the United States and the European Union, contain social and labour provisions according to such regulations.
• This incentivises countries to protect labour rights in order to continue trading with countries that require that of their trading partners.
• This can ensure fair working conditions and promotes labour rights by protecting against exploitation such as wage slavery.

Safety

• Countries can also ban the trade of harmful/dangerous materials due to safety regulations in place.
• One example of this is the ban of asbestos trade in Canada, which has been declared a human carcinogen by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.
• These regulations ensure trade is ethical.