Gordon Myers, Banana Wars: The Price of Free Trade, a Caribbean Perspective.

Gordon Myers, Banana Wars: The Price of Free Trade: A Caribbean Perspective (London: Zed Books 2004)

ISSUES SURROUNDING the international banana trade have entered the public's consciousness over the last decade via the long-running United States--European Union [EU] banana trade war. The banana industries of the Caribbean, particularly those in the countries that constitute the Windward Islands, have been undermined as a consequence of this transatlantic confrontation. The combination of strong US opposition to the EU' s preferential banana market favouring Caribbean producers and the rulings of the World Trade Organization [WTO] has forced many Caribbean banana farmers to look for alternative employment. However, the opportunities for diversification are limited, and the result has been increasing unemployment, poverty, and social dislocation in these small island states. The present volume by Gordon Myers, a former civil servant in the now defunct British Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food, and now European representative of the Caribbean Banana Exporters' Association, provides an insider's account of the transatlantic banana war. Myers also attempts to critique the international trading system more generally, and to suggest new arrangements in the EU that will enable the remaining Caribbean banana industry to survive into the future.

The volume is divided into 23 chapters, as well as an appendix that provides a useful chronology of the main events in the banana war between June 1992 and February 2002. The work is bookended by a foreword written by Ralph E. Gonsalves, prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and an afterword by Edison James, former prime minister of Dominica. Both men have been heavily involved in defending Caribbean banana interests since the early 1990s, and offer interesting personal commentaries on recent developments. However, the main reason to read this volume is to benefit from Myers's considerable insight into the politics of the banana trade. There is an excellent explanation of the legal issues underpinning the US-EU banana dispute of the 1990s. Indeed, this is the best and most clearly written account seen by the reviewer. Other highlights include a lucid description of the original EU banana market regime established in 1993 that would soon precipitate US intervention and an even-handed assessment of the less well-documented negotiations involving the major parties to the dispute after the second WTO panel in April 1999. The volume also identifies a number of earlier challenges against preferred access for Caribbean bananas entering the European market. A rarely mentioned case from 1983 is cited in Chapter Six, when a small fruit-importing company sued the British government over the procedures for the issuing of banana licenses. Such insights provide a valuable context for understanding the battles that would later be fought over the importation of Caribbean bananas into the single EU market.