From insiders to outsiders: Caribbean banana interests in the new international trading framework

The paper considers the role of the Caribbean banana interests in the defence of the European Union’s banana regime, within the context of the dispute between the EU and the United States at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The paper examines how the interests of the Caribbean became entangled in a wider set of concerns, particularly the institutionalization of a liberal trading orthodoxy within the WTO, which increased the international pressure against the concept of preferential access. The paper assesses the challenges against the banana regime in the WTO, and why the WTO was so effective in making the EU change its banana regime to the detriment of the Caribbean banana interests. The themes of the paper are the complex nature of institutional decision-making as regards a highly controversial issue of trade policy, the conflict within the world trading environment between different centres of political, economic and legal power, and the marginalization of Caribbean interests that have defended the merits of preferential access in international trade for so long