And it seems to me the rationale behind product specifications in the fruit and veg market shared at least some of the points you make about financial products. The EEC was addressing the problem of creating a single market out of several that had different regulations, a fact that got in the way of smooth exchanges.
It's the local spin on smear-and-fear - in the same way that the Democrats are the whipping boys (and girls) of the right in the US, the EU is the right's favourite easy target in the UK, and some of the other more authoritarian euro-states.
The facts are incidental.
What's more worrying is that Brussels sails on obliviously, and then wonders why the UK and the other Atlanticist states act so belligerently and uncooperatively.
What's needed is positive story-making - before and afters featuring local regeneration projects, arts funding, innovation funding, and such.
Without that the gap is obvious and easy to fill with negative stories.
This wouldn't be a complete answer, but it would be an improvement on what's happening at the moment.
Another aspect to this is the longstanding refusal of the US to accept the EU banana trade regime set up by 404/93 (see above). This concerns the preferred status of ACP countries and the alleged harm caused to US (Chiquita) interests. There's an excellent legal summary up to 2001:
ASIL Insight--US-EU Banana Dispute
Prior to 1992 each of the 12 EU member states had its own banana import regime. Germany operated on a free market system and had no import restrictions. The other 11 members imposed a 20% tariff, and 6 members (France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece, and the UK) also applied quotas on bananas produced in Central and South America. These latter restrictions were designed to protect the EU market for bananas produced in former EU territories and in the ACP countries (developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific) that entered duty free under the Lomé Convention.(2) As part of its 1992 integration program the EU established, effective July 1, 1993, an EU-wide banana trade regime.<...>In September 1994 Chiquita Brands International and the Hawaii Banana Industry Association filed a petition under section 302(a) of the 1974 Trade Act challenging both the EU regime and the Framework Agreement on the grounds that they were discriminatory and reduced US companies' share of the EU market by more than 50%. The petition was the first section 301 petition filed under the Clinton Administration and as such was regarded as a test of the new Administration's commitment to use US trade laws aggressively to protect US interests. Noting this, fifty members of the House, including members of the leadership, wrote to the US Trade Representative (USTR) urging acceptance of the petition. Common Cause released a study at the time identifying the chairman and CEO of Chiquita International Brands, Inc., and affiliated companies and executives as among the largest contributors to the Democratic and Republican parties in the 1993-94 election cycle. This revelation raised questions as to the true motives of the Administration in pursuing Chiquita's case, particularly in light of the fact, much noted by critics, that the Chiquita facilities allegedly injured by the EU banana policy are located outside the US and have a largely non-US workforce.
<...>
In September 1994 Chiquita Brands International and the Hawaii Banana Industry Association filed a petition under section 302(a) of the 1974 Trade Act challenging both the EU regime and the Framework Agreement on the grounds that they were discriminatory and reduced US companies' share of the EU market by more than 50%.
The petition was the first section 301 petition filed under the Clinton Administration and as such was regarded as a test of the new Administration's commitment to use US trade laws aggressively to protect US interests. Noting this, fifty members of the House, including members of the leadership, wrote to the US Trade Representative (USTR) urging acceptance of the petition.
Common Cause released a study at the time identifying the chairman and CEO of Chiquita International Brands, Inc., and affiliated companies and executives as among the largest contributors to the Democratic and Republican parties in the 1993-94 election cycle. This revelation raised questions as to the true motives of the Administration in pursuing Chiquita's case, particularly in light of the fact, much noted by critics, that the Chiquita facilities allegedly injured by the EU banana policy are located outside the US and have a largely non-US workforce.
The dispute is ongoing and was part of the wrangling before the collapse of the Doha Round talks in Geneva this week.
It would obviously be paranoid of anyone to suggest any causal link between:
Chiquita (ex United Fruit) => US gov't => Murdoch => Sun (+ rightwing press in general) => stupid EU banana regulations meme.
Though it wouldn't stop the Atlanticist member states' hostility, or the shit-stirring of the (Murdoch and Murdoch-style) press.
It's going to take a generation to organise a push-back.
Then again, Murdoch will be dead soon. None of his children seem likely to want to step into his shoes.
The point for the EU in the meantime is that a counter position is better than no voice at all.
afew:
It would obviously be paranoid of anyone to suggest any causal link between: Chiquita (ex United Fruit) => US gov't => Murdoch => Sun (+ rightwing press in general) => stupid EU banana regulations meme.
I'm not sure I'd go that far.
Doha was interesting because it's clear that China and India are more than happy to throw the EU and the US under the proverbial bus. The line seems to have been 'You have nothing we want' - and they're probably right about that.
So bananas may not be the most significant of problems at the moment. Without an export market for the EU and the US, the only way out of a depression will be massive Keynesian spending - and given the neocon lock down on policy, that's not going to be a popular suggestion.
Thinking about possible exports which China and India might be likely to buy could be more useful than trying to bully them from a position of assumed superiority.
Green tech remains an obvious economy leader there.
Neither am I, with the possible exception of the early '90s.
Of course the banana business (without mentioning major doubts about plantation sustainability) is a sideshow compared to the Doha stakes.
Green innovation is a lifeline, both for exports and Keynesian spending at home.
it's clear that China and India are more than happy to throw the EU and the US under the proverbial bus. The line seems to have been 'You have nothing we want' - and they're probably right about that.
Given that China sells about twice as much to the US and EU as it buys from them, I'd say there is leverage there in terms of trade relations...
But of course, most of Chinese trade to the EU and the US is done by US and EU multinational companies, so you have the interests of these vs everybody else dialectic to take into account. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
As I read it, the point was that the Chinese are perfectly happy to keep selling crap to the EU and US. They know it's crap, the importers know it's crap, the multinationals know it's crap, but my guess is that the Chinese think that if it's possible to keep getting paid real money - or at least reasonably convincing IOUs - for crap, they're still ahead of the game.
What they're not so happy about is opening their own territories to trade in the other direction. I'd guess EU/US goods still carry an image premium, and too much bread and butter competition would see money heading back out of those territories to the West - which is not part of the plan.
Therefore - deadlock, especially over staples like textiles.
What's not obvious in the West is that the West isn't an essential trading partner. Money is accumulating in Russia, India, the Gulf States, and South America, and five or ten years from now it's not a given that most of China's trade will be with the EU and US.
The EU and US seem to believe it is a given. But unless there's a significant technological lead - as with green tech - that's wishful thinking and inertia, not reality.
What the Chinese want to avoid is spending money abroad on manufactured items which could be made at home. (Albeit at lower quality.)
If EU trade is balanced, they won't be seeing a lot of room to move. So I suspect they won't be interested in windmills unless they're much, much better than they can make themselves.
When EU/US firms (e.g. Nokia, Apple, GE) have goods manufactured in China that are then sold in the US or EU, do these still count as "Chinese exports to the US/EU"? Cynicism is intellectual treason.
Great diary and an interesting read, thanks. Ad astra per aspera
But yes, it worked. The current Commission is still paddling down that river. Fischer Boel talks Thatcher talk. Regulation = red tape, gets in the way of individual effort and enterprise. It's bollocks, but it's very easy to believe.
Well, Fisher Boel is a text-book example. A political (and intellectual) non-entity with a rich and well-connected daddy. I don't remember what she did to get banished to Bruxelles, but I remember sighing with relief that we would at least be rid of her back home.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain ...
Now combine with:
The lesson of the economic history of Europe in the 1970s and 1980s is that central planning and detailed control don't work, and that personal endeavour and initiative do.
So, the previous conditions "the frontiers of the state" that provided the evidence for "personal endeavour" being superior to "central planning" have been "rolled back."
Thus, the conditions Thatcher is using as supporting evidence have been destroyed, meaning an historic (environmental) discontinuity, meaning her evidence is no longer affective in the environment she created.
The EEC was addressing the problem of creating a single market out of several that had different regulations, a fact that got in the way of smooth exchanges.
Yep. And now there's a functioning single market that can decide its own standards and grades based on demand, such tight regulation is no longer so necessary. Seems like a simple, pragmatic change quite unrelated to ideology to me.
The financial market, on the other hand... might need some work.
