Bananas on Trade

Hundreds of millions of people stand to benefit – in Latin America, Europe, and elsewhere – because the EU and Latin American leaders are on the cusp of monumentally important free trade agreements between the two regions, yet Aurelie Walker wants to put this on hold because she would prefer poor farmers in the Caribbean to continue producing low value-added agricultural crops so they can remain mired in poverty.  This is the true face of protectionism and Western paternalism.  Caribbean producers, like those anywhere else, are capable of lifting themselves out of poverty, but that opportunity can only be seized if their economies are truly open to the rest of the world.  The best development programme we in Europe can offer is to remove all barriers to trade with developing countries.