The First World demands globalization and free trade to exploit the Third World by importing cheap primary products from them, and exporting dear manufactured goods to them. Nothing illustrates this better than the apocryphal story of chocolate.

Poor West African countries produce two thirds of world cocoa, and most of the balance comes from Brazil and Ecuador, yet profit-hungry multinationals in rich countries produce very little chocolate there. Having taken advantage of West Africa's favourable climate and cheap labour, they import its cocoa to make the world's finest chocolate for massive lucrative world markets.

Cocoa neo-imperialism characterises the kind of exploitation that inspires angry anti-trade activists at World Trade Organisation (WTO) meetings, such as the recent fiasco in Cancun.

It all started where Cancun is, in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. That the WTO held its historic meeting there is more instructive than delegates, protestors and commentators realised.

The great Mayan civilization, which occupied the area for centuries, was the world's first producer of cocoa. It was powdered to make a cocoa drink. Through early forms of free trade and globalisation, the Aztecs to the north discovered and bought cocoa from the Mayans. From there it was introduced and sold to the Spanish Conquistadors who colonized what was to become Mexico. Spanish importers introduced cocoa to Europe. Then something dramatic happened: Europeans added sugar to make chocolate. That changed everything, as we shall see.

Meanwhile, anti-free-trade Spanish governments imposed cocoa tariffs, which drove prices up and demand down. That curtailed development in backward countries, and made cocoa - and thus chocolate - too expensive for ordinary Spaniards.

Fortunately, England, France and other European countries allowed free trade and demand increased phenomenally during the eighteenth century. Chocolate was so popular and affordable by the masses that demand for cocoa and sugar soon exceeded what South America and Mediterranean Europe could supply. Where did they get it if not from Spain? To avoid Spanish trade barriers, English and French companies, started producing cocoa in their own tropical colonies, especially Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon in West Africa. And they started producing sugar in many other countries, notably Brazil, Mexico and Cuba in South America; Mauritius and South Africa; India and Australia in the east; and Kazakhstan in the north. The world enjoyed a sustainable cocoa and sugar revolution. They became primary sources of agriculture, investment, production, jobs, exports and revenue for many third world countries.

Faced with such a fairytale of the bountiful blessings of free trade, globalization and multinational investment, why are anti-trade activists so distraught? Its quite simple really: they are mistaken.

Instead imagining that free trade "exploits" Third World countries by importing rather than beneficiating primary products domestically, they should applaud it for bringing them what little development they have. Without globalisation, cocoa would not have moved from Mayans where the WTO met, to Aztecs, to Spaniards, to other Europeans, to West Africa. Sugar would not have become a life-sustaining crop for millions of Third World workers.

Anti-globalization "logic" leads to perverse conclusions. It suggests that production of chocolate in the First World with cocoa imported from the Third World in not the problem, but the fact that the Third Word produces cocoa and sugar at all. Cancun and Seattle activists, to be consistent, should demand prohibition of cocoa imports from Africa. Radical greens should object to "genetic piracy" of such primary crops.

And Spain? The country that brought chocolate from the New to the Old world? Ever heard of Spanish chocolate? Maybe, but it's obscure. Spain is a classic example of countless countries that destroyed their potential with trade barriers. Free-trading European countries, to which cocoa was introduced by Spain, became the world's leading chocolate producers.

The story of chocolate teaches poor countries that they will prosper if they adopt a pro-business investment climate by liberalization and cutting cross-border and domestic taxes. That will enable them to progress from beneficial production and export of cocoa and sugar, to production and export of chocolate … and countless other products.

Imagine a world where all countries isolate themselves by trade barriers. It would be much poorer. If isolationism started early enough we would not have chocolate. Contemporary anti-trade isolationism seeks to deprive consumers, especially poor consumers, of affordable confectionery, and, by the same process, all goods and services produced outside their countries.

What the world's consumers, especially poor ones, need most is free access to the world's best and cheapest products and services. What its workers need is for their governments to maximize the number and wealth of people competing for their labour domestically and globally. What its entrepreneurs and farmers need, is to be efficient enough to compete globally without subsidies or protection, to which end their governments must not over-tax or over-regulate them, and must give them free access to the world's cheapest technology, capital, skills, equipment, materials and other inputs.

Author: Leon Louw is the Executive Director of the Free Market Foundation. This article may be republished without prior consent but with acknowledgement to the author and Barun Mitra for his research. The author's views may not be shared by all members of the Free Market Foundation.