,
8 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
Sugar is an interesting example of how what ought to be an efficient global commodity market has historically been distorted by trade policy interventions, often based on political economy reflecting path dependency, an obvious example... 1/n
Violets are blue.
Sugar is an interesting example of how what ought to be an efficient global commodity market has historically been distorted by trade policy interventions, often based on political economy reflecting path dependency, an obvious example... 1/n
...being the EU sugar regime which for a long time held up the European relative to the world price through a combination of tariffs and domestic production quotas in order to maintain a northern European sugar beet industry which was in itself a legacy of self-sufficiency... 2/n
... during the Napoleonic wars when the Royal Navy blockaded continental European ports, that regime also permitting imports through a system of quotas mainly granted to Caribbean and African former European colonies, an odd wrinkle of which was the UK company Tate & Lyle....3/n
...which uniquely imports cane molasses to refine into sugar in the UK and has therefore chafed against the EU sugar regime and become a strong voice for euroscepticism, no doubt influencing among other people its former employee and future UK Brexit Secretary David Davis; ...4/n
... however, the EU eventually, in an encouraging example of how the modern rules-based trading order overcame old foreign policy-driven preferences, was forced by a World Trade Organisation case brought by Brazil to reform its tariff and quota regime to reduce domestic... 5/n
...prices to somewhere closer to world levels, thus illustrating the point that although the pull of history and political lobbying are strong, the operation of the multilateral trading system can nonetheless overcome them, and suggesting that even despite widespread... 6/n
...pessimism about global governance and the international rule of trade law, there are at least some good examples of the legal order compelling liberalising reform, and that in an era of sour protectionism we might reasonably conclude that such an outcome is,..7/n
