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Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
81–90 of 437 posts
Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
#82I'm not sure I follow the argument. Surely Ghana could sell some cocoa to Switzerland, while at the same time building their own chocolate brands. Maybe reduce your export, but keep a strong influx of money and at the same time invest in your own line of products.
Easier for them to compete internationally as Nestle, Lindt, etc. will have to either reduce their production or find other (possibly more expensive) cocoa sources.
Also it prevents from having internal competition between exportation and internal refining, as exportation is easy "right now" money while refining will take time and investments.
Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> to deprive another of their rights is never a good idea. (no whataboutism please). What about access to cocoa not being a right?
they said no whataboutism, fam
I can't tell whether or not your response was meant to be in jest, but "whataboutism" is a variety of tu quoque involving a third party.
Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
#84I'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…
> So the book argues that when developing countries are pressured into free trade agreements This should have been obvious since the Opium Wars and the Opening of Japan (see Commodore Matthew Perry). All developed countries are pro free trade for markets where they are strong and fiercely protectionist where they are not (or they consider those markets strategic priorities). I'm from Romania. Romania joined the EU in…
Are those supermarkets really all that French or Belgian anymore?
In practice, many large companies are owned by investors from all over the world looking for diversification.
Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
So Saudi Arabia, UAE, Canada and Saudi Arabia are 'stuck' selling natural resources? I think it's probably a much better plant to extract a good deal of wealth from the natural resource and invest it in other areas of higher value creation, even in the same vertical. There's a good chance that Ghana's policies are needlessly constrained. More obviously there are 100 things Ghana could do to improve living conditions…
Other points are already addressed in different comments, but to address this one: > Ghana doesn't have all of the layers of industry necessary to support development and export of products i.e. there are no market buyers at any reasonable price. Per the article, they literally control half of the world's cocoa. This means they get to define what "a reasonable price" is, as long as the rest of the world wants to keep…
The first question is: where are the main markets for chocolate? If Ghana loses access to a large percentage of the global chocolate market, controlling half the supply is as much a liability.
The second question is: Is there any reason cocoa can't be grown elsewhere, or the second biggest producer can't increase production?
Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So the book argues that when developing countries are pressured into free trade agreements This should have been obvious since the Opium Wars and the Opening of Japan (see Commodore Matthew Perry). All developed countries are pro free trade for markets where they are strong and fiercely protectionist where they are not (or they consider those markets strategic priorities). I'm from Romania. Romania joined the EU in…
Similar things are happening in Croatia.
To the point that when I traveled around a couple of years ago along the coast, most people I met along the way seemed to be more confortable speaking German than English.
Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
#87I'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…
> So the book argues that when developing countries are pressured into free trade agreements This should have been obvious since the Opium Wars and the Opening of Japan (see Commodore Matthew Perry). All developed countries are pro free trade for markets where they are strong and fiercely protectionist where they are not (or they consider those markets strategic priorities). I'm from Romania. Romania joined the EU in…
That's where China was smart I guess. They didn't sign any treaty which forced them into free trade or IP protection, but instead slowly allowed their industries to build up via IP theft and strong protectionism. Now they have giant companies on par with the West's. Whereas everyone who joined the EU in the decade of 2000 (and the Washington Consensus before that in the nineties) is now a pawn of the Western capital with no clear path of escaping the trap of mediocrity.
So far, the standard of living in post-Soviet EU countries is still higher than in China, but that's because of the much better starting point and also because it's just hard to provide wealth for over a billion people in a modern, heavily automated economy. However, even with their gargantuan population size, I see China potentially overtaking Poland or Czech Republic in terms of quality of living in the next 50-100 years.
Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
#88Feels like a pretty confused article, diving back and forth between cocoa and coronavirus vaccines even while saying they're unrelated. Building up local industry sounds like a good approach for the long term (though, contra the article, inevitably at a short term cost); the simplistic free trade arguments discount the value of developing industry within the country. A ban is a very blunt instrument though; a tariff…
Until someone shows me actual evidence of a ban being applied or at least some concrete plan with penalities for violations, what I have just read are nothing more than rhetoric and posturing.
Banning the export of a commodity is very hard. It works when the supply could be drastically reduced in the short term (1973 Arab oil embargo), or when the product has already failed in the market and they need government intervention to save face (recent Russian ban on raw timber export). In any other case, the goods will always find a way through the controls to meet the demand.
Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
#89How will Switzerland counter this change of events
The first response will probably be for the chocolate producers to try to source the raw materials from other sources. This may or may not result in production ramping up elsewhere, or even new producers appearing as increased prices could make production financially viable in places it previously wasn't. Depending on how the markets react, prices may go up, and many of the really cheap brands could disappear from th…
Considering Switzerland is less than 9 millions people, their total consumption is a drop in the ocean of the global market so I'm don't think protectionist measures would change much.
And I don't see why the big markets (EU, US) would want to protect Swiss companies.
Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
>"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.
"I often hear this [phrasing] in the 'first world' and surely you don't 'allow' or 'disallow' internal policies to an sovereign nation?" Forget about the third-world, right now the USA is not-allowing Germany the right to build a pipeline with Russia! First-world - check, sovereign - check, allies - check.
> the USA is not-allowing Germany the right to build a pipeline with Russia!
The USA is threatening trade sanctions if Germany builds the pipeline. I would not call that "not-allowing".
That seems to be OP's whole point. The US is responding as a sovereign nation to actions of other sovereign nations. Phraseology like "allow" and "disallow" are not accurate. If Germany does the cost-benefit analysis and decides to cancel the pipeline because they don't want trade sanctions, that was their decision as an independent nation. It is not as if we are threatening war.