By Ronald Sanders
However, even though these Caribbean countries have been notionally trading with the EU, the majority of their exports has been going to the British market. Now that the EU will no longer be representing Britain, the EPA will not cover trade with Britain. That is an issue, however much on the back burner it will be for Britain, that will be important to the Caribbean – at least for trade in services, particularly tourism. British tourists comprise a significant number of the annual visitors to the region.
More worryingly, once Britain leaves the EU, there will be several troubling consequences for the 12 Caribbean countries. Not only will the British market disappear from the EU, but so too will the British contribution to official aid and investment. It is most unlikely that the 27 EU countries, which had no historical relationship with, or colonial responsibility for, the English-speaking Caribbean, will want to maintain the level of official aid and investment that now exists.
Importantly, it should be recognised that the EU-EPA is the only such formal comprehensive arrangement that Caribbean countries have with any other country or region of the world. It is vital to maintain as much of it as possible.
There had been some speculation in Britain during the BREXIT debate that Britain could resuscitate trade among the 52 other Commonwealth countries. But, that idea, rooted in Empire, is not only impractical, it would not reap for Britain the trade rewards it derives from the EU. Britain’s earnings from exports to the Commonwealth, is not huge, representing only 9.76 per cent of its total exports in 2014, while its merchandise exports to the EU represented a hefty 45 per cent of its total exports.
In any event, total Commonwealth trade in goods has declined over the years. And, even its share of world trade is owed to the trading capacity of only six of the Commonwealth states – Singapore, India, Malaysia, Australia, Britain and Canada. Moreover, that trade is not between themselves. For instance, China is Australia’s biggest trading partner, and the US and Mexico are Canada’s. In 2014, the six countries accounted for 84 per cent of all Commonwealth exports; 47 countries combined, including South Africa and Nigeria made up only 16 per cent. Not surprisingly, the 36 Commonwealth small states, including the 12 in the Caribbean, enjoy only a tiny share of Commonwealth exports.
As for the notion that Commonwealth countries could fashion a Commonwealth Free Trade Agreement (FTA) under which they could give preferences to each other to expand intra-Commonwealth trade, while this is technically possible to make it compliant with WTO rules, it is enormously difficult from a legal, administrative and even political standpoint. Certainly, Cyprus and Malta would have to leave the EU customs union.
Other Commonwealth countries would also have to review their commitments to other countries with which they have joined in FTAs to ensure that the effect of Commonwealth preferences does not violate their existing agreements, which, in many cases, it must do to make the Commonwealth FTA beneficial to many of its participants.
Finally, the benefits of improved preferential access to all Commonwealth States within an FTA would be exploited by the major economies such as India, Malaysia and then by the developed Commonwealth countries, Britain, Australia and Canada. The Commonwealth’s 36 small states would not get much of a look-in.
Other options have to be explored by the Caribbean countries for dealing with the twin-problem of no formal trade relationship with Britain, and an existing EPA with the EU that is now skewered and ripe with problems.
The Caribbean has known for over a year that the referendum on BREXIT was coming. The result could only have been one of two things – either Britain would stay within the EU in which case it would be business as usual, or Britain would leave. In the latter case, the scenario described above would be the reality with which the Caribbean would be faced. Plans for dealing with it should, therefore, have already been thought through.
If not, the Caribbean has at most two years, and the clock is ticking.
This land of Pirates, so-called Great Britain, was only able to attain “greatness” riding the backs of the Black African, enslaving the so-called children of Ham through Canaan. The plundering of Africa has come to an end, and these evil Caucasian Christians will now have to “make bricks without straw”.
My prayers are answered to witness the Sun setting on this Criminal Empire, and thank Allah to allow me to see the catastrophic plunge of Elizabeth the Pirate who stole my labor and wealth, into HELL.
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As the Credit Ratings of England plummets, and the Sterling becomes worthless, this should be a wake up call to these retrograde Negroes who are following the idiot Allen Chastanet into an abyss, to put an end to looking to this crumbling Empire as a means to feed themselves – eating the crumbs from the oppressor’s table with Lazarus, should end. and developing and manufacturing products for export to the world market must be pursued until we stop begging Caucasians for crumbs.
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Even as we look into the last days of the white Supremacist Empire of the English, this Criminal Country known for plundering the peoples of darker pigmentation, from India, to St. Lucia to Guyana, we cannot escape the chaos unleashed by the blood-soaked hands of these evil Caucasians led by Tony Blair and the Mentally Challenged George Bush, when without provocation murdered millions of people with the invasion of Iraq and Libya, to plunder the petroleum resources of these countries.
Before opening Pandora’s Box, Suicide Bombings was a thing unheard, yet the Evil Caucasian Propaganda continues to deliberately ignore the reasons such a plague has been unleashed upon mankind, clamming its latest victims in Istanbul.
Yet even as these War Criminals Tony Blair, Elizabeth-11, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and George Bush continue to sew mischief in the Earth, these evil criminals are presented as benevolent leaders, but not the war criminals who have destroyed the peace of Planet Earth.
THIS IS A GLIMPSE OF SATAN’S HANDIWORK EXECUTED BY THE WAR CRIMINALS ELIZABETH-11 AND ENGLAND AND HER TERRORIST KILLERS, AS THEY MURDER AND TERRORIZE UNARMED CIVILIANS IN THE STREETS OF THE CITIES WHERE THEY LIVE – “KILL EVERY MOTHER-FUCKER” are the orders given to these TERRORIST by Tony Blair of this EVIL British EMPIRE who has been the Mother of TERROR. HOW DOES IT FEEL RONALD SANDERS, TO BE A MEMBER (M.B.E.) OF THIS GANG OF KILLER WAR CRIMINALS, TO THINK YOURSELF HONOURED TO BE CALLED SIR ?
https://www.facebook.com/anonymousforjustice/videos/397298687086038/
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The English Pirates try to hold on to E.U. Perks and Trade Benefits, but she is assisted in her suicide by Germany.
https://www.facebook.com/still.horace/posts/10154104609245831
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This is interesting, simply because I don’t know what the Commonwealth has done for anyone other than England.
French protestors are rising up in their millions against a ruling class determined to take away their rights. There is anarchy on the streets of France as the mainstream media continues to suppress the scale of events.
Thousands of masked protesters and police fought running street battles in France this week, with police using water cannon to quell rioters who hurled projectiles at them and destroyed storefronts, joining the millions of French citizens who have protested against new anti-worker laws that are designed to protect and enrich a wealthy elite at the expense of ordinary people.
The world of white supremacy is plunging into Hell – Oh Happy Day.
Sanders is not fooling anyone, as we understand that he “sings for his supper” weekly – as head of the OAS, for a reprise of the “Monroe Doctrine.”
Here’s the post you registered earlier, that Sanders needs to read as he blood-sucks the black people of the world.
International House Negroes Defend European Union
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford
“They like the house that slavery and genocide built, and where global capitalism now rules.”
We can be sure that the British exit from the European Union represents a profound crisis for the global capitalist order. We know this because the Lords of Capital and their political minions and media all over the world are in panic over Brexit. The capitalist order is built on five centuries of European plunder, enslavement, and extermination of the rest of humanity. Blood oozes from every edifice of the European Union – and yet, the victims, and the descendants of the victims of this horrific and ongoing capitalist carnage, often behave as if they have some kind of stake in keeping the old order intact. Like Malcolm X’s house Negroes, their first instinct when they see the master’s house on fire, is to put the fire out. If the master gets sick, they start sneezing. And, when the referendum went against Britain staying in the European Union, house Negroes of all colors on both sides of the Atlantic acted like their own worlds were coming to end.
On Comedy Central’s Daily Show, this week, host Trevor Noah interviewed Cynthia Erivo, who plays Celie in the Broadway production of “The Color Purple.” Noah lampooned those Brits that voted to leave the EU as a bunch of Donald Trumps with Cockney accents. He said nothing about the EU’s pro-corporate, pro-banker austerity policies – maybe because there’s nothing funny about those policies, or maybe because he works for a rich corporation. Noah drew Ms. Erivo into the Brexit discussion. She was born in London to parents who emigrated from Nigeria. She explained her opposition to Brexit, saying, “If my mom didn’t get to the UK, I probably wouldn’t be here right now, on that stage on Broadway.”
“By colonizing Nigeria, the Brits saved her from being born an African.”
Cynthia Erivo is grateful that her West African parents were allowed into Britain, so that she could be born in London and pursue a successful career. Her parents were permitted to settle in Britain because Nigeria was a British colony, and later became part of the British Commonwealth. It actually had nothing to do with the European Union. By Cynthia Erivo’s logic, it was a good thing that Britain invaded, plundered, enslaved, and stole her parent’s homeland. By colonizing Nigeria, the Brits saved her from being born an African. The millions who died in the British conquest of Nigeria, and in the Middle Passage to the America’s, or on the plantations of Virginia or Jamaica, or in forced labor to the British in Nigeria, or who die today in the oil soaked wasteland of the Niger River Delta – all of this past and present suffering and human degradation is balanced out by the fact that a daughter of Nigeria gets to star in a Broadway show. This super-exploitation of Africa made Britain and France and Spain and Belgium and the Netherlands and other members of today’s European Union rich – but Cynthia Erivo and Trevor Noah, the South African, come to the defense of the European Union.
They like the house that slavery and genocide built, and where global capitalism now rules. They fear anything that might create disorder in the House of Europe, just as their counterparts in Black America fear anything that might disturb the tranquility of the U.S. ruling class and its institutions. The House Negroes are truly international, always ready to put out fires in their masters many houses around the globe.