You are allowed to spend extra to benefit your friends, and it is a common form of charity to deliberately overpay, and if “fair trade” means knowingly paying more than the free market rate for goods and service, that is charity. However it is somewhat less than honest for a retailer to say “fair trade” because he negotiated a bad deal, and are stiffing the consumers with higher prices in the hope they won’t switch to a more efficient, and therefore less expensive, competitor. Often the extra money coming out of consumers’ pockets under the guise of fair trade is going to someone other than the “poor” farmers (such as to rich landlords, corporate executives, government officials, etc.).
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