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Caribbean
ponders "collateral damage" from WTO ruling MIAMI: In modern warfare, with its guided missiles, so-called smart bombs and other precision weaponry, the term "collateral damage" has been coined to describe unintended casualties. To a number of Caribbean politicians, academics, trade officials and development workers, this is the situation in which the Caribbean finds itself as the United States celebrates victory over the European Union in their nearly six- year struggle at the World Trade Organization (WTO). A ruling by a WTO dispute settlement panel on 7 April agreed with the US position that the arrangements under which bananas from former European colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) are imported into Europe, continued to violate the rules of the international trade body. The Clinton administration has insisted that these quotas and preferential tariff arrangements discriminate against US transnational companies which own massive banana plantations in Central America. And it had dismissed changes to the regime, the most recent of which were implemented last January, as cosmetic. The 7 April ruling cleared the way for Washington to impose 100% tariffs on a range of goods worth some $191 million imported into the US from Europe. This was a significant reduction from the $520 million the US had announced. Critics of the US position have repeatedly pointed out that the United States does not produce bananas and have charged that the Clinton administration's action is a political payoff to the US banana transnational Chiquita Brands whose Chairman, Carl Lindner, is a major election campaign contributor to both the Republican and Democratic parties. While agreeing that Lindner's political clout has influenced the US action, some Caribbean leaders point to what they say is a larger issue. "Both the US and Europe have much larger interests (than Caribbean bananas) at stake," says Renrick Rose, who leads the St. Vincent-based Windward Islands Farmers Association (WINFA). Hegemony in the WTO Rose identified one of these interests as "the whole question of hegemony in the WTO." He pointed out that "a number of the WTO rules are still untested," and speculated that "the US, from the outset, wants to set the agenda and impose its own direction and interpretation of WTO regulations". "The US sees itself having to battle the EU, Japan and the Asian bloc," Rose told IPS in a telephone interview from Kingston. "If we (Caribbean banana producers) have to suffer in the process, well too bad for us. As far as they are concerned, there are bigger interests at stake." Dr. Kenny Anthony, Prime Minister of St. Lucia, the largest producer in the Windward Islands, takes a similar position. Noting that Caribbean producers have just over 3% of the world banana trade and about 9% of the European market, Anthony says the Caribbean producers are just helpless victims in a trade war between the US and the European Union. "The United States has chosen bananas in the Caribbean to wage its war with Europe. Now very clearly, we are the hapless victims in that war," he told journalists at a news conference in Miami. "We didn't contribute to that war. We don't want that war," he said, "and we think there ought to be a more civilized approach to managing those problems." "We are part of the collateral damage," says Anthony Bryan, Professor of International Relations at the University of Miami's North-South Centre. Like others monitoring and dealing with the situation, Bryan is concerned about the impending fallout. "Unfortunately, Europe isn't going to win this one," he told IPS. "The EU will have no choice but to put into operation a type of regime that meets WTO rules. And this type of regime will not be able to sustain the viability of the regional banana industry." Transition "There is a transition to be made and the time for making it is now, not when the industry has collapsed," he said. While acknowledging the restrictions of small size and the problems of resource shortage, especially for the tiny economies such as Dominica, Bryan argues that diversification and the achievement of economic prosperity is not beyond the capacity of the banana-producing countries. He points to Barbados, with its lack of natural resources, as a model. He says, however, that the countries will need substantial development and technical assistance in the transition period. Development assistance projects which have been proposed by the US are commendable, he said. "But the problem exceeds the capacity of those programmes," he says, calling for consultations between the EU, the US and the Caribbean both to design a new import regime as well as to draw up technical assistance programmes to help the banana- producing countries out of the economic crisis which will be the inevitable result of the latest developments. Renrick Rose says WINFA has always advocated this approach. He says the Association was not surprised by the outcome at the WTO as in setting up the rules of the organization, the big countries had not taken the interests of small-island states into consideration. "In the context of trade and world capitalism, it doesn't matter whether you are small and suffering," Rose said." You have to compete. It's the same rules for all." He said it was now time for these states to use Washington's oft-stated interest in maintaining the stability of the region to push for increased development aid. But he was not overly confident about the outcome of any such effort. "The US is notorious for not providing any serious development assistance to the region," he said. The same point was made by Anthony of St. Lucia. "The United States is contributing very little to economic support in the Caribbean at this time," he told journalists. "The transformation that is taking place in Caribbean economies right now is largely being financed by the European Union. And ironically, the support we have got from the Europeans has in fact transformed the banana industry in the Caribbean." (IPS) The above article by an Inter Press Service journalist appeared in the SUNS.
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