It is a simple fact that Ostentian's benefit from free trade and foreign investment.

The Centrist Conservative Party is a pro-trade party. In Ostentia, other small parties hide behind the rhetoric of 'fair trade' and protectionist populism. However, the welfare of Ostentians is not improved by xenophobia and irrational economics.

In a profession best known for disagreements and uncertainty, the benefits of free trade are one of the few issues on which economists are quite certain. Best explained some 200 years ago by the classical economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo, free trade between nations offers the possibility for more goods to be consumed while fewer resources are wasted.
Everybody trades. In our everyday lives, people specialise in doing what they are good at and buy everything else they need.

Most people do not build their own houses, milk their own cows, construct their own televisions and make their own movies. Instead, they specialise at something they are good at (building houses or milking cows or constructing televisions) and exchanging this for money. That money is then used to buy the other things in life they want. That is what trade is all about.
If people were forced to consume only what they could produce, they would be much poorer. The ability to specialise and trade allows us to significantly increase total consumption. The benefits are obvious. The same benefits of specialisation and trade apply at the national level.
The CCP supports the most successful form of trade liberalisation - unilateral liberalisation. The World Bank reports that 66 per cent of trade liberalisation in the last 20 years has come through unilateral liberalisation. Unilateral liberalisation can be pursued immediately and, unlike FTAs, there is no ambiguity about the benefits.

The other side of the trade coin is foreign investment. Foreign investment does not replace Ostentian investment, but builds on it. Foreign investment allows more investment - which leads to more business, more jobs and more efficient production. The end result is more money for Ostentians. The CCP supports the relaxation of foreign investment requirements and removal of restrictions against foreign ownership.

We are living in a new age of global travel, information and communication. Likewise, economics is going global. The CCP believes in embracing the new opportunities of international cooperation instead of hiding behind a wall of xenophobia and inefficiency in the hope that the world goes away.