Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950322124836.2600A-100000@class.class.org> Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 13:02:21 -0800 From: "State Dept Library (mailto:ustate2@class.org)" <ustate2@CLASS.ORG> Subject: Re: My Myths vs. Your Myths (I win!) To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L
For the record re: Guyanese vs. US rice, the following version is neither PC nor PI, but simply what happened (I was there): Guyana succeeded in getting the Caricom External Tarriff (CET) applied to US rice, to protect the Guyanese "natural market" (never mind the inferior quality of broken-hulled, small grain, oft-contaminated Guyanese rice, nor the clear preference of the Jamaican consumer for the US long-grain version). In acceding to CET on US rice, however, Jamaica allowed it to be applied to subsidized rice being provided under the PL-480 program; said PL-480 rice was arranged through AID Jamaica PRECISELY BECAUSE Burnham-led Guyana was unable to supply an adequate crop of decent quality until very recently. The USG expressed its displeasure with concessional rice being hit with a tarriff, which was then rescinded, CARICOM solidarity or no (Cheddi Jagan being an extremely odd advocate for free market agriculture, but there you are). NOW: what should have happened? In an ideal world, there would be no export subsidies/concessional programs, certainly not for US industries such as rice or sugar; let 'em compete on their own. Similarly, the Caribbean hides behind Lome and CET at its own peril -- free marketers from Latin America (bananas) to the Far East (sugar) will eat them alive the minute those barriers fall, and WHY NOT? Where is it written that the Eastern Caribbean has a natural right to sell bananas of inferior quality at an uncompetitive price to anybody? My anonymous colleague was intemperate in his/her choice of language, but I believe the point remains valid: in Africa as elsewhere, the existence of market forces provides the best translation from individual wants and needs to mutual satisfaction that the history of humankind has yet provided. Perfect? certainly not--but hardly "PC" either. Markets work better than anything else ever devised, when governments let them.Ted Seay, Office of Strategic Policy & Negotiations