[deleted]
Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
11–20 of 437 posts
Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
#12Is this rather a ban on Ghana suppliers themselves in order to trigger a shift in the country's manufacturing so they're forced to step up their processing and break away from just sending the crops at whatever price the market sets?
Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
#13I guess they will have to sell the beans to some other state then, from whom Switzerland will then buy it?
Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
#14Good for them I guess or is it? I don't understand how you cannot have prosparity from selling raw materials? If you think you're not being paid enough, increase the price along with creating your own products. It seems weird to me to not let foreign countries buy your raw materials just because you want to produce more stuff yourself. It's not like I will start buying chocolate made in ghana because they don't want…
> If you think you're not being paid enough, increase the price along with creating your own products. Who makes that decision? Cocoa slavery is a thing because the economics of raw material pricing is complicated by many factors but the demand is very simple and very high.
The (effective) demand for beans produced in Ghana just went way down with this policy enactment though, right?
Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
#15I'm reading the book The Divide at the moment. It makes the argument that it takes time and the right conditions to build up an industry - infrastructure needs to be built, education and a skilled labor pool with the necessary know-how as well. To begin with, a fledgling industry in a developing country cannot compete with those of already industrialized countries - these are already so effective that they can undercut newcomers before they have time to become competitive. So the book argues that when developing countries are pressured into free trade agreements (for example by making aid dependent on this), these countries are also forced into a position where they get stuck at the low end of the production value chain, selling raw materials, while buying processed goods from others (often the same role they were forcibly assigned when they were colonies). So much like we allow children time to learn in school before we expect them to compete in the job market, we should allow developing countries to employ protectionistic policies like tariffs, in order to protect and build up their fledgling industries nationally, before fully entering the world market in a couple decades when they are ready.
Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
#16Wait... Swiss diplomats still wear jack sparrow hats?!
Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
#17Good for them I guess or is it? I don't understand how you cannot have prosparity from selling raw materials? If you think you're not being paid enough, increase the price along with creating your own products. It seems weird to me to not let foreign countries buy your raw materials just because you want to produce more stuff yourself. It's not like I will start buying chocolate made in ghana because they don't want…
>I don't understand how you cannot have prosparity from selling raw materials?
Depending on how big the export is in relation to your economy, it can certainly have a negative effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
#18I guess they will have to sell the beans to some other state then, from whom Switzerland will then buy it?
If you read the article you would have gotten the answer - they want to make the chocolate themselves. Godspeed Ghana!
Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
#19This is similar to the situation with Global South coffee exports, wherein actual growers only receive a fraction of the revenue from consumer sales (despite the relatively cheap and easy value-add of roasting or conversion into instant coffee) because of logistical concerns, and because Europeans and American just plain do not buy African roast coffee when it appears on their shelves. If these countries were to decide to restrict exports, a billion-dollar market would collapse.
Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
#20I'm reading the book The Divide at the moment. It makes the argument that it takes time and the right conditions to build up an industry - infrastructure needs to be built, education and a skilled labor pool with the necessary know-how as well. To begin with, a fledgling industry in a developing country cannot compete with those of already industrialized countries - these are already so effective that they can underc…
>"we should allow developing countries"
Not to pick on you, but I often hear this frasing in the 'first world' and surely you dont 'allow' or 'disallow' internal policies to an sovereign nation?
It sounds like a Freudianslip or something, the reality is that its easy to bully or bribe officials in developing nations.