Vocabulary of International Trade | Business English

Hi, folks. Thank you for tuning in to today's

lesson in which we are going to be looking

at some of the vocab for international trade.

So who is this useful for? Well, perhaps you

are studying politics, economics, business, but you just want to make sure that you've

got the terms correct, or maybe you are working

in English in business, negotiations with

different countries, and you just want to

check that you understand these terms as they

actually are.

So to those of you who are new to my channel,

hi. My name is Benjamin. On this channel,

I teach business English, I teach conversational

English, exam English, things to do with British

culture. So thanks for tuning in. If you find

that this is a useful video for you, do make

sure you subscribe so that you continue to get my content. Okay, let's head straight

in.

So, we have two different ways of doing things

in terms of countries' policies towards trade.

A country could decide to be protectionist,

in which case they are trying to protect their

industries. They don't want to... Loads of imports from foreign... Foreign producers,

they want to encourage their own production.

So, if they are going to protect, then they

might use tariffs, which are where imports, things coming in to the country, are taxed.

Thank you very much for bringing that. You

can pay some money if you want to bring that

into the country, a tariff. So, protectionist,

putting up a big wall around the country,

an impenetrable wall. I don't want you coming

in. Free trade is quite the opposite. The

wall comes down, we can trade to you, you can trade to us, and we can all be happy or

not. So, a "proponent of", yep, that prefix "pro"

means "for", a supporter of. Yeah? Pro-life,

proponent. Quite the opposite of "opponent", who

is someone you compete against. So, proponents

of protectionism might be certain politicians

in certain countries. Proponents of free trade

will be different people in different countries, obviously.

Okay, a couple of useful verbs, here. So, "to liberalize", yeah? A liberal is free.

If you liberalize, then you are making freer.

Yeah? To liberalize. Look, I've got the British

spelling with the "s", the American spelling

would be with a "z", as they say. Liberalize.

The antonym, the opposite of liberalize would

be "to tighten", yeah? Think of the tap. I'm

opening the tap, sorry. Righten to tighten,

loosen to... Lefty to loosen. So, I'm undoing

the tap, yep? I'm liberalizing it, yep? And then I tighten it up and it stops dripping,

yep? So, the water out is the trade. Do I want

trade coming in? Yes or no? I can liberalize

restrictions and make it easy for trade to happen in and out of the country, or I can

tighten restrictions. Restrictions are things

like tariffs, quotas. What's a quota? A quota

is a limit in trading volume. So, I could be like, "Hmm, well, I love plastic ducks

for my bath. So, Germany, you make some lovely

plastic ducks, but I only want 4,000 coming

into the country each year. That's your quota.

No more." Okay? So, it's a limit. No more

than that plastic ducks from you, thanks, Germany. Who does that benefit? Well, I've

got someone up in the north of England who

makes plastic ducks very well. So, if I limit

the plastic ducks coming in from Germany,

then my man in the north of England who makes

his plastic ducks beautifully is happy. Okay.

"Domestic", another good word for us to look

at. "Domestic" is to do with the house, yep? A

scene of domestic bliss, or clean, or ordered,

or perfect. "Domestic", a domestic goddess is someone who thrives in looking after the

house. So, in terms of international trade,

domestic producers are inside the house, i.e.

in the country. Got it? Good. There is going

to be a quiz at the end of this lesson, so

make sure you're taking copious, lots of notes

so you can pass with flying colors. Okay?

To pass with flying colors means with great

success. Right. Tariffs we've looked at. Okay,

so we've got these kind of rules that the

countries have decided on. Where do we actually

see these rules being implemented, being

put into place? Well, on the ground, you see

it in the ports, in the customs. Because if I

have a big ship coming in, yeah, the customs

people, the people who work controlling what's

coming in and out, they have to know, well,

what's in this ship? Have the correct tariffs

being paid? Is there a quota? Is this stuff

allowed to come in the country? So, the customs

people are very important because they collect

the tariffs and they control the flow of goods

in and out. Okay? So, yep, be careful of them.

Right. A free port. A free port is one where

ships can go in and out and they don't have

to pay any tariffs. One of the biggest ports

in the world is Singapore, so that's a place

where a lot of trade is going to happen, or

is happening, sorry. Now, at the time I speak,

Boris Johnson has an idea to make three free

ports in the UK. I think it was Aberdeen and

a couple of other places up in the north. Sorry, I've forgotten where they are. The

idea being that it encourages more trade because

there are less tariffs. But will it work?

We shall see. As I say, I'm not an economics

teacher or a business studies teacher. I'm just

here to try and teach you this terminology. So, if you are, like, an economics graduate

and you spot something in this video, leave a

comment, yep, because I'd love to learn as well.

So, share the knowledge. Right, we've got a useful verb here,

prefix "deregulate". So, rules and regulations,

yeah? If we're talking about regulating,

I'm talking about putting a rule into place.

You must watch this video again, and again,

and again, and share with your friends. I'm putting rules out there. But if I take away

the rules, I might use this prefix to deregulate,

to take away the rules. Right, "subsidize",

"dumping". If you subsidize, then the government

is giving money to encourage a certain industry.

"EU subsidies" are money the EU gives to certain areas of agriculture, for example.

If you subsidize dumping, dumping is where, say

we have loads, and loads, and loads of apples

in the UK, and the government, they're going to

help, they're going to give money to help make

those apples cheap for the UK to sell somewhere

else. So, they're actually going to pay money

for the apples to be less than the price paid

in a country where they are being exported

to. So, it's good for the country doing the

dumping, because they're like, normally an apple

is two... Well, it's not two pounds, is it? Let's

say 20p, yeah? But the government's going to help

put money in here to make the apples available

for 10p in another country. The consumers in

that country are like, "Way, putty, apples for

10p, yay!" But then the farmers are like, "Hmm,

apples, 10p, we can't sell apples for 10p."

So, dumping is where government intervention

to help cheaper exports. It's good for the country doing the exporting.

"Laissez-faire", a French term, meaning leave

alone, live and let live. Yep. So, this is referring

to a government sort of strategy to not get

very involved, to create a free market where

businesses can more or less do what they want.

Yep. The market is free, it has been deregulated,

less rules, free market capitalism. Yep. So,

most countries around the world have some

kind of regulations. There aren't many that have a total free market in them.

Now, here's a nice phrase, "to comply with regulations". If you comply with,

then you are following the regulations. Yep.

These are the rules, we are following them,

we are agreeing with them. Okay. Talking... So,

just loads of... There's quite a sort of heavy,

dense lesson full of terms for you, okay? I appreciate that. So, you know, just try and

write them down, try and revisit this vocabulary

after the lesson, okay? Because it's going to be

difficult to remember all this stuff. Shall we

have a quick recap of what we've done so far?

Protectionism. Loads of rules. Free trade. No

rules. Proponent. Supporter. Liberalise. Yeah,

make it free. Titan. No, don't make it free.

Quotas. You can send me this many plastic ducks,

but no more. Domestic. In the house or out of the house? In the house. In the country.

Tariffs. Thank you very much, you can pay

me that much to bring that into the country.

Customs. Hello, what have you got in this ship?

Thank you very much, that'll be £10. Thank you

very much. To the government. There we are. Freeport. Hey, come and do some business,

I'm not going to charge you any money. In you

come, ships. Out you go, ships. No money here.

Okay. Deregulate. Take the rules off. Subsidise. Make it easy to dump the apples.

Lay safe air. Do whatever you like. I don't

care. Doesn't matter. To comply with. To follow.

Right, that was a quick summary.

Upturn. Whee, the economy's going up. Now it's

going slowly. Upturn. Slow down. If something's

slowing down, nothing's really happening. Things are not going so well. Right.

A commodity. A commodity is something useful.

It could be a product, it could be a service.

So, if you talk about the commodities that a country has, it's talking about, really,

the things that it can sell. Export. "Ex", the

prefix means "out of". "Im" means "in". So,

my exports, I'm sending out. My imports are coming in. Right.

And if you have more coming in than going out, then you have what is called a "trade

deficit". Okay? Because you're not sending

that much stuff out, but lots is coming in. So,

it's like you're spending more than you're earning. Yeah? A deficit. It's like you're

in the overdraft of trade. Now, these are some of the proponents of trade deficits.

These kind of countries argue that, "Oh, yeah,

yeah. We don't need to make the basic stuff

because we're really good at the high-level

stuff, like sending people to Mars or something."

So, some people say trade deficits work, some people say they don't.

A trade surplus, a surplus is when you have more

than enough. So, a surplus, you've got a lot more

being sent out than you have coming in, almost like you're kind of self-sufficient.

So, countries that have a trade surplus are

like China and Russia. They produce a lot of

raw materials that are then sent around the

world. And the other thing that affects all this

international trade is the currency, the strength of that currency in the country.

Because if you have a really strong currency,

then it's not going to be that easy to export

because everything's... The value of stuff is so

strong in your country and no one else can afford

it. So, currency also has a strong impact.

Okay, we've looked at lots of different terms.

I've tried to explain it as best as I can. See if

you have understood this by taking today's quiz

and see how you get on. I do teach Business

English on an individual level, so if you do

want any extra help, I do tutor via Skype,

helping people's writing and speaking skills.

My website is www.honeyourenglish.com. Have a look after this lesson.

Thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.