At the basis of Kant’s critique of colonialist practices lies a normative theory of international commerce. My paper will make this theory of international fair trade explicit and present two problems that arise from it. I. I will first look at Kant’s general theory of trade right. In the Metaphysics of Morals, he very concisely treats commerce as a problem of contract right. A just form of trade is a transaction that respects a contract’s terms of agreement. For a transaction to be fair, both parties must obey the formal requirement of a contract. I will show that Kant believes fair international trade presupposes commercial contracts, but also settlement contracts. II. If Kant conceives fair trade as contract-regulated trade, than he must require trade to be supervised by a coercive authority. But which authority should assure obedience to the principles of just commerce? Coercion on the national level is probably not enough: international fair trade will have to be imposed by the international order of justice that is pleaded for in the second definitive article of Towards Perpetual Peace. Global fair trade thus presupposes global justice. The paper will investigate the problems that result from the tension between this idea and Kant’s belief that global justice results from global commerce. Given the fact that fair international trade is only possible in a situation in which global justice is already installed, Kant must believe that unregulated trade too can gradually bring about perpetual peace.
