If that pretty much sums it up then this pretty much speaks for itself.

[BoratSagdiyev]

The United Fruit Company (1899 - 1970) became prominent in trading tropical fruit (notably bananas and pineapples) from third world plantations to the United States and Europe. The company, its predecessors (such as the Boston Fruit Company and Cuyamel Fruit Company) and successors (United Brands Company and Chiquita Brands International), comprise an archetypal example of multinational influence extending deeply into the internal politics and policies of so-called banana republics and could furnish an example of neocolonialism.

The United Fruit Company owned vast tracts of land in Central America, and sometimes the Company was said to be the real power in control of those nations, the national governments doing the Company's bidding. The Company several times overthrew governments which they considered insufficiently compliant to Company will. For example, in 1910 a ship of armed hired thugs was sent from New Orleans to Honduras to install a new president by force when the incumbent failed to grant the Fruit Company tax breaks. The newly installed Honduran president granted the Company a waiver from paying any taxes for 25 years.

The Company had a mixed record of encouraging and discouraging development in the nations it was involved in. For example in Guatemala the Company built schools for the people who lived and worked on Company land, while at the same time for many years prevented the Guatemalan government from building highways, because this would lessen the profitable transportation monopoly of the railroads, which were owned by United Fruit. A popular name for the company was Mamá Yunay ("Mommy United").

In order to administer its far-flung operations, United Fruit became a major developer of radio technology, which it later pooled with other companies to form the Radio Corporation of America.

The Guatemalan government of Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was toppled by covert action by the United States government in 1954 at the behest of United Fruit because of Arbenz Guzman's plans to redistribute uncultivated land owned by the United Fruit Company among Indian peasants. The UFC and the bankers that supported it convinced the CIA and President Dwight Eisenhower that this was the first sign of a Communist takeover in Central America. The US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, was a determined anti-Communist whose law firm had represented United Fruit. His brother Allen Dulles was head of the CIA. The brother of the Assistant Secretary of State for InterAmerican Affairs, John Moors Cabot, had once been President of United Fruit.

In 1954 Guzman's government was overthrown by Guatemalan army officers invading from Honduras. As many as 100,000 people may have died in the ensuing civil war.

Today, successor companies of United Fruit have interests in:

Colombia
Costa Rica
Cuba
Guatemala
Honduras
Panama
The impact of the United Fruit Company has inspired the poet Pablo Neruda to write a poem (in Spanish) with the company's name as the title. Little Steven had a song Bitter fruit about the company's misdeeds.

 

[PatPatriot]

Yeah,yeah,yeah...same old story Yankee go home!...but take me with ya!

 

[xpanda]

U.S. will defend Chiquita

Clinton warns Europe about trade sanctions
By Bill Straub, Post Washington Bureau


WASHINGTON - The Clinton administration has fired another volley in the escalating trade war with the European Union over a product the U.S. doesn't even produce - bananas.

One man who stands to benefit from the controversial action, described as ''politically unwise'' and ''unjustified'' by Sir Leon Brittan, vice president of the European Commission, is Cincinnati financier Carl Lindner, the 79-year-old chairman of Chiquita Brands, one of the world's leading banana producers, and a hefty contributor to President Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative on Tuesday published a list in the federal register identifying a host of European products - ranging from wine and cheese to cosmetics, clothing and toys - that face 100 percent tariffs early next year unless the European Union relents and changes its banana import policies.

An office spokesman said the comment period on the proposed tariff on millions of dollars worth of European goods will be taken until the end of the month. The new duties could be imposed as early as Feb. 1, 1999. U.S. officials said the domestic banana business estimates it has lost more than $1 billion as a result of the trade policies coming out of Brussels.

''This is the worst possible moment to launch sanctions on an issue of minor economic interest to the U.S. against their biggest and closest trade and political partners,'' said Brittan, who is in charge of the commission's external trade relations. ''The continental U.S. is neither a grower nor exporter of bananas.''

In a statement issued Tuesday the European Union asserted that ''the so-called banana dispute has little relevance either to the U.S. overall economy or to jobs in the U.S. It rather reflects the commercial interests of one single North American company seeking to trade more bananas on the EU market, thus expanding its market share at the expense of some or all of the African, Caribbean and Pacific suppliers.''

The ''single North American company'' is Chiquita Brands. ''The mere commercial interests of one single company should not justify opening a process of World Trade Organization-inconsistent retaliation against the European Union,'' it said.

At issue is the European Union's policy of granting preferential treatment to former colonies of Great Britain and France - primarily in Africa and the Caribbean - when importing bananas. Left out, for the most part, is the huge Central American market.

Chiquita, which controls more than 25 percent of the world banana market with sales of about $2.5 billion annually, at one time was Europe's largest supplier. That changed in 1993 when the European Union decided to permit about 80 former colonies - like Belize, Jamaica and Martinique - to export its bananas duty-free.

That irked Lindner, whose Chiquita Brands does most of its growing in Honduras, which was not included on the European Union's list. The company said the new rules cut European sales by 20 percent and Chiquita suffered corporate losses totaling $346 million from 1992-94. Over the next few years, Lindner turned to Washington officials, including former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, for help.

The U.S. persisted and eventually won the banana dispute before the World Trade Organization in September 1997.

Last month, the European Union instituted changes that it maintains complied with the World Trade Organization's edict. The U.S. disagreed, viewed the modifications as cosmetic and announced its intention to impose sanctions.


Publication date: 11-11-98

 

[xpanda]

Pat: the part of this picture that you're missing is the routine practice of developed nations to literally force developing nations to open their markets, duty- and subsidy-free, while simultaneously keeping our own markets under tight government regulation to protect domestic industries. When the WTO recently sided with Brazil in the US cotton-subsidy case, several Americans went nuts. This isn't a perfect quote, but Lou Dobbs said something to the effect of 'how can we let international organisations tell us how to run our country? Are they trying to bankrupt us?' He then had a Dem representative on who talked about how ALL of the free trade agreements that the US has entered into have been to the betterment of the nations included at the expense of the US. Huh? Hardly.

If globalisation is to be for the betterment of developing nations (and I argue that we should want it to be) then we have to let these nations first build an infrastructure that will provide a domestic security blanket (or at least not allow the IMF to slaughter the one currently in place,) then open up their markets, and simultaneously open up ours to their exports. On the latter, we've done very little of this and cry 'down with outsourcing!' when we do. It's pathetic. Even more pathetic is that much of this protectionist language comes from the Left, the group most lauded for caring about the human condition.