Caribbean Political Economy

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THE EU’S UNFAIR TRADE DEALS WITH MEXICO AND SOUTH AFRICA

LATIN AMERICA’S RECENT EXPERIENCE WITH EPAS

Reflections on the Treatment of Asymmetries

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Panel at the Caribbean Deveopment Bank Annual Meeting held in Caracas, June 20-22, 2007.

The treatment of asymmetries is one of the most urgent challenges facing regional cooperation in Latin America and

Caribbean. Most integration schemes in the region contain provisions that take account of inter-country asymmetries but that these have failed to produce the  desired results. Income disparities are widening both within and between countries. This paper reflects on the treatment of asymmetries of size, which is particular concern in Caricom-Latin America trade relations, and makes a number of concrete suggestions for enhacing the ability of Caricom nations to export goods and srevices to Latin American markets.

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Size and Trade Tax Dependence

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   Comment on paper on ‘Fiscal Reform and Compensatory Mechanisms’, by Joaquim Bento de Souza Ferreira Filho; PEP-IDB Policy Forum on Trade and Poverty; Lima, Peru, June 11, 2007.

My comments are set against the recurrent theme of heterogeneity among developing economies. The particular aspect that concerns me is heterogeneity of size. …

The fall in total tax revenues following trade liberalization and the difficulty of recovering lost tax revenues with other sources in the domestic tax system, issues that are highlighted in Joaquim’s paper, have particular salience in the case of small and very small economies.

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Food Security and the EPA, Havelock Brewster

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From Stabroek News, 2/06/08

The extraordinary rise in food prices over the last couple of years has given a new prominence and urgency to this problem in the Caribbean, where as Tony Weis pointed out in a recent Diaspora column, “food security is so utterly wedded to global markets and heretofore cheap breadbasket imports”…The EPA provisions on food security provide little or no support in grappling with this difficult dilemma, at the root of which is the production problem that afflicts staples like rice, ground provisions, vegetables and fruits, combined with the consumption of imported, processed, canned, frozen foods, rich in chemical preservatives, hormones, fats, and additives, exacerbating the health problem…

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