Economic activity and global economic blocs

Economic activity and global economic blocs

Prof. Dr. Moustafa El-Abdallah Al Kafry

The world today is driven by politics, wars and conflicts, projects of hegemony and acquisition, the effects of power, and the power of the economy. Everything moving in this world is done only according to economic strategies.

The economy today and tomorrow is in control of the most important decisions of the world, it is the absolute attraction that fraternizes between countries to form friendships, economic blocs and cooperation, and it is the absolute attraction that countries sometimes alienate each other and form hostilities. Economics means not only blocs, trade, markets, agreements, and material profits, as many think, but globalization in its proper sense as the bearer of incoming cultures, customs, traditions, behaviors and perceptions. That is, it is a new social environment that neutralizes a stable social environment, so it takes its place and takes its roles, changing the system of values and cognitive references according to its interests, orientations and goals, which are apparent and implicit. The economy, then, is the mirror according to which communities, societies and states walk as the immediate and farthest target of everything that happens on our planet. [1]

Humanity lived mobile in the pre-agricultural stage, and then entered the era of stability and agriculture, so this was a new birth for it that required it to adapt to the methods of dividing social labor, and distributing production trying to prevent the exploitation of man for his fellow man, and so that money is not a state among the rich, and then humanity continued its march to the industrial age and the information age. Perhaps ten thousand years ago man was not something mentioned. He didn’t know how to produce his own food, nor how to cover his body, and then we saw how he learned agriculture and the craft. and industry and harnessing energy sources to serve it during ten thousand years.  [2]

Economic activity is a river that crosses the world since the beginning of creation, passes through cities and villages, feeds the population with its resources, products and available and limited energy sources, flows in the land of each people, and the field of each individual, overflowing from the daily hours that do not change, but sometimes it becomes (wealth) in a specific field, while in another it turns into nothingness in another field. It passes through life, pouring into the land, history, products and values that it has bestowed on humanity through the works it has accomplished. Economic activity occupies an essential position in building human civilization and confronting underdevelopment to conquer and transcend it. It calls for the definition of economic culture in the light of our current situation, and according to our destiny. It identifies the essential elements needed to improve the standard of living of the population and to build civilization.

Economic ideas represent the beginnings of solving the economic problem and people’s life problems. Economic activity includes four main elements for the continuation of human life: man, nature, capital and the organization. This means that the construction and development of human civilization is conditioned on these four elements. The outcome of the research is that the issue of individual well-being and the development of society is entrusted with the idea of guidance and management in the following areas:

• Orientation of economic culture,
• work direction,
• Capital Orientation,
• Guiding sustainable development.

The idea of direction and management means: strength of foundation, consensus in the course and unity of purpose, avoiding waste of effort, time and resources.

An economic bloc is a set of arrangements aimed at enhancing the state of economic integration between two countries or a group of countries through the liberalization of trade exchange, coordination of financial and monetary policies among them, and achieving a kind of protection for national products, and also aims to reduce the cost of development by reducing production and import costs, optimizing the use of available resources, improving the investment climate, expanding the market circle, and unifying or converging facilities, incentives and exemptions for investment. And coordinate economic policies to face economic problems and crises.

Many economic blocs have emerged in the global economy, the most important of which are: the European Union

E U includes 27 European countries, the North American Free Trade Area (N A F T A), the Asian Tiger Group, the Association of Southeast Asian  Nations (A S E A N), [3] the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation  (A P E C), [4] the  Association of Latin American States, [5] the Group of Eight major industrialized countries, and the B R I CS bloc

(B R I C S). ), and the Group of Twenty economic bloc (G 20 [6] ), in addition to the economic blocs in the African continent and the experiences of the economic bloc in the Arab world.

In light of the economic blocs, the global economy has become more dynamic, especially after the emergence of different degrees of economic blocs, for example, the European Union, which constitutes an advanced model of economic bloc, followed by the North American Economic Bloc N A F T A, the Association of Southeast Asian Asia

(A S E A N), the Latin American Trade Alliance, which represents a medium degree of trade and financial bloc, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Community (A P E C), the B R I C S group and the Greater Arab Free Trade Area, which is inferior.  Degrees of economic integration.

At the end of the second millennium in 1995, the transition was made from the General Agreement  on Trade and Tariffs (G A T T) TO THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION (W T O),  which seeks trade liberalization, the seven

G A T T rounds of negotiations, the declaration of the establishment of the World Trade Organization and its conferences, and the  most important advantages of the multilateral trading system of the organization and  trade liberalization, where the objectives of the World Trade Organization, its structure, membership conditions, the principles on which the organization is based, and the agreements approved by the World Organization Conference were determined.  For trade in Marrakesh in 1994, he defined the organizational structure and conditions of membership in the World Trade Organization. Practical steps for W T O accession, economic consequences of WTO accession, rights and obligations. and the effects of G A T T and W T O agreements on developing countries.

Prof. Dr. Moustafa El-Abdallah Al Kafry

Faculty of Economics – Damascus University

[1]  – Dr. Hassan Hamid, Introduction book Globalization of the Economy and the Transition to a Market Economy in the Arab Countries, authored by Dr. Mustafa Al-Abdullah Al-Kafri, Publications of the Arab Writers Union, Damascus 2008, from.

[2] – See, Jawdat Said, The Madhhab of Ibn Adam I, Dar Al-Fikr Al-Muasram, Beirut 1996, pp. 22-21.

[3]  – NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) ، Agreement for the Establishment of a Free Trade Area comprising the United States, Canada and Mexico, signed in 1992 and entered into force in 1994

[4]  – Asian tigers or East Asian tigers are an economic agglomeration of a group The following countries are: Taiwan، Singapore، Hong Kong South Korea،  Named for achieving rates Economic Growth big and manufacturing Fast during the sixties and nineties of the twentieth century.

[5]  – Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)  ASEAN ) is an economic organization comprising 10 countries in Southeast Asia The Union was founded in1967  Featuring: Thailand، Indonesia، Malaysia، Philippines، Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Burma, Cambodia.

[6]  – The BRICS is an economic-political bloc that includes Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, China and South Africa.