The Banana Trade War
The banana wars were a series of trade disputes between the USA and the European Union. The origins of the debate date back to the 1940s, although the most heated wars took place between 1993 and 2001. The US and the EU were the biggest players, although many other countries were also affected . Free trade and tariffs were some of the fundamental reasons on which the banana wars were fought. The EU favors trade preferences, higher tariffs, and import licenses, where as the US prefers lower tariffs and free trade to encourage competitiveness and the constant search for lower prices.
The American approach leads to large scale plantations such as those in Latin America. Caribbean bananas, for example, are grown on very small plantations, and it is difficult to produce them cheaply in large quantities. Several important debate issues were as follows: the UK, who was then president of the European Union, were very much interested in protecting the banana industry in the Caribbean and wanted to foster trade with their former colonies.
Furthermore, in the early 1990s a banana import policy (the Lomé Convention) was created, which restricted the amount of Latin American bananas imported to Europe. This infuriated the United States because they led the banana trade in Latin America and were afraid of losing their market. The World Trade Organization got involved in the disputes after the EU finalized and signed the Lomé Convention with its banana trade partners in 1993. This convention allowed European Union members to import from all ACP exporters (previously European countries only imported from former colonies). This accord also allowed European countries to favor ACP bananas. This greatly concerned the WTO, who favored more free trade. The disputes cooled off in November 2001 when negotiations began in order to find a new trade regime that would please both parties and these negotiations continue until today . These wars demonstrated the globalization of the agricultural industry, the importance that a single trade item holds, and most notably, it showed the power of the American corporation and its ability to influence trade policies.
Although bananas may only look like a fruit, they represent a wide variety of environmental, economic, social, and political problems. The banana trade symbolizes economic imperialism, injustices in the global trade market, and the globalization of the agricultural economy. Bananas are also number four on the list of staple crops in the world and one of the biggest profit makers in supermarkets, making them critical for economic and global food security. As one of the first tropical fruits to be exported, bananas were a cheap way to bring “the tropics” to North America and Europe. Bananas have become such a common, inexpensive grocery item that we often forget where they come from and how they got here.
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