Thread by @Jim_Cornelius

Bananas

All Bananas from ACP countries on EBA or EPA are on a 0% tariff.

For the Caribbean that's:

Antigua & Barbuda,Barbados,Bahamas ,Belize ,Dominica ,Dominican Rep,Grenada ,Guyana ,Jamaica,St Kitts &Nevis ,St Lucia ,Suriname ,Trinidad & Tobago,St Vincent & the Grenadines.

In Africa that includes the major Banana producing nations of Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Cameroon.

All bananas from these countries come in tariff and quota free.

This table shows the main ACP suppliers.

ec.europa.eu/agriculture/si…

But a larger supply comes from Latin American countries.

There's a tariff on these.

ec.europa.eu/agriculture/si…

Production of bananas in these countries is dominated by three American-based multinationals. Dole, Del Monte and Chiquita.

in 2008 these companies were fined over €60m by the EU for operating a cartel, but that's beside the point, back to tariffs.

coha.org/the-wild-bunch…

Here's the tariff for bananas.

Standard rate for 3rd countries is €117/tonne, for the big suppliers though as follows (per tonne):

Ecuador: €90
Columbia: €89
Costa Rica: €89
Panama: €89
Peru: €89
Guatemala: €89
Mexico: €70

trade-tariff.service.gov.uk/trade-tariff/c…

At €90 Euros per tonne that works out at €0.045 per half kilo bunch. Or 4 pence, about a ha’penny on the banana David is holding, unless from an ACP country in which case it’s nothing.

The higher tariffs on Latin American bananas protected banana production in former British and French colonies. But in a trade dispute with the USA-backed Latin Americans the ACP preferences were deemed illegal by the WTO, and are currently undergoing a phased reduction.

Due to the preferences received by ACP countries being eroded by lowering tariffs on Latin American producers after the WTO ruling, financial support has been offered to Caribbean and African producers in the form of the Banana Accompanying Measures (BAM) ec.europa.eu/europeaid/node…