Banana splits and policy challenges: The ACP Caribbean and the fragmentation of interest coalitions

Clegg, Peter

doi:10.18352/erlacs.9661

Cited by 4 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…In the Caribbean, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines relied principally upon their status as former British colonies for economic protection. And, fortunately for them, the British government remained sympathetic (Clegg , 29).…”

Section: Exogenous Protection: the Creation Of The Eu Single Market Amentioning

confidence: 99%

Extended Endogenous and Exogenous Protection in the EU-US Banana Disputes

Fattore

Allison

2013

The Latin Americanist

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Throughout the 1990s, the US and the European Union (EU) were embroiled in a trade conflict over a product which neither produced natively. In short, due to the creation of the European common market by the Single European Act (SEA), the EU countries extended preferential treatment to their former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP). This facet of the SEA proved to overstep the agreements made previously in the GATT and in the newly formed WTO, which seemed to irk many non-ACP banana-producing states as well as those that had a great interest in this trade, especially US multinationals that operate in the banana-producing countries of Latin America. Several Latin American states and the US government challenged the EU-ACP trade policy in the GATT and the WTO for nearly two decades before an agreement to resolve the dispute was reached in December 2009 (WTO 2009). Among other reasons, this dispute is important because it was one of the longest running trade disputes in recent history, directly or indirectly involved more than half-the world's countries, and was the first case in which economic sanctions were applied by a developing state on a developed state(s) (Barfield 2010).Prior research in international political economy has tended to explain this lengthy dispute to be the result of a non-reconciliation between the overlapping trade regimes of the WTO and the EU (Alter and Meunier 2006). During the 1990s, while the member states of the EU were forming a common market that would harmonize their trade policies, they miscalculated how this internal harmonization would be interpreted by other members of the newly formed WTO (Borrell 1997). However, legal and political pressures to change the terms of trade between the EU member states and their former colonies also came from the banana-producing states of Latin America, the EU-based companies that marketed those bananas, United States-based multinational corporation Chiquita, and the United States government. For these parties, European preferential treatment of ACP bananas was discriminatory, violated several binding trade agreements, and was bad for business.

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Section: Exogenous Protection: the Creation Of The Eu Single Market Amentioning

confidence: 99%

Extended Endogenous and Exogenous Protection in the EU-US Banana Disputes

Fattore

Allison

2013

The Latin Americanist

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“…For example, see Clegg (2008) and Heron (2008). For works concerning and debating the relative merits of the preferential trade agreement, see Borrell (1994), Guyomard et al (1999), McCorriston (2000), Herrmann et al (2001), Grossman (2003), Borrell and Bauer, (2004), Myers (2004), and Clegg (2005). 3 Chairman of SVBGA, C Ryan, was interviewed by the author at Ratho Mills, SVG, on 9 and 31 July 2008.…”

Section: Bananas Without Development: Efficiency For What Purpose?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Case against Cheap Bananas: Lessons from the EU-Caribbean Banana Agreement

Fridell

2011

Critical Sociology

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This article examines the dismantling of the EU-Caribbean banana agreement and how its decline has been justified by economic critics drawing on dubious knowledge about the benefits of free trade and the negative effects of 'preferential' trade. Based on a historical assessment of the banana agreement, it provides a critique of the claims of the economic opponents and argues that their assertions are based largely on the speculative assumptions of the free trade 'power/knowledge regime' and not the historical, power, and class conditions under which bananas are produced, traded, and sold. Taking these considerations into account, the banana agreement, despite its shortcomings, was a model of 'social efficiency' that demonstrates the benefits of preferential treatment to support development and poverty alleviation among otherwise marginalized communities in the global South.

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“…Beginning with reforms ushered in by the signing of the Single European Act in 1993 and followed by major challenges to the banana agreement by the WTO and its member states in 1997 and 1999, the quota protections were gradually weakened and eventually eliminated in 2006 (Raynolds 2003;Myers 2004;Clegg 2005). Currently, the last tool left to protect Caribbean farmers are different overall tariff rates for ACP and non-ACP producers.…”

Section: The Rise and Decline Of The Eu -Caribbean Banana Agreementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The SVBGA has struggled to keep farm gate prices to banana farmers stable while real export prices have declined, forcing the marketing board into heavy debt and compelling the government to intervene and drastically curtail the association's role in regulating the industry. 5 In place of the decimated banana agreement, the WTO has pushed for new Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) premised on shifting the relationship between the EU and ACP countries from one of preferential trade to one of 'reciprocity' (Brown 2000;Clegg 2005;Orbie 2007; The Economist 2008). In October 2008, the EU and 14 Caribbean nations concluded negotiations for their own EPA.…”

Section: The Rise and Decline Of The Eu -Caribbean Banana Agreementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, the banana regime was developed and operated in a highly unequal manner: the EU formally ran the agreement with Caribbean countries allowed only a consultative role, although the latter did develop effective lobbying capacities. These inequalities have only been made worse by the WTO which has not regarded the Windward Islands, in procedural terms, as core participants in the banana agreement and has severely restricted their participation in the WTO tribunals that have decimated the agreement (Myers 2004: 73-90, 159-66;Clegg 2005).…”

Section: The Rise and Decline Of The Eu -Caribbean Banana Agreementmentioning

confidence: 99%

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