Brink Lindsey, director of the pro-market Cato Institute’s Center for Trade Policy Studies, believes that the campaign for Fairtrade coffee is a “well-meaning dead end.” With some justification, he argues that the real cause of the fall in coffee prices was not the profiteering of multinationals, but big increases in coffee production in Brazil and Vietnam, combined with new techniques that make it possible to grow coffee with less labor and hence more cheaply.