Caribbean Basin Initiative

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Worn: A People's History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser

Airbnb, back-to-the-land, big-box store, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Caribbean Basin Initiative, colonial rule, Community Supported Agriculture, corporate social responsibility, cotton gin, COVID-19, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Dmitri Mendeleev, Donald Trump, export processing zone, facts on the ground, flying shuttle, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, haute couture, Honoré de Balzac, indoor plumbing, invention of the sewing machine, invisible hand, microplastics / micro fibres, moral panic, North Ronaldsay sheep, off-the-grid, operation paperclip, out of africa, QR code, Rana Plaza, Ronald Reagan, sheep dike, smart cities, special economic zone, strikebreaker, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, union organizing, upwardly mobile, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce

They relied on firms based in Hong Kong, Korea, and Taiwan to coordinate the actual manufacture, and these firms subcontracted the garment making to the Caribbean Basin. Although the Caribbean Basin Initiative was intended to spur economic growth, in practice, apparel brands used the Caribbean as a source of cheap labor while scrupulously curtailing any independent production that might benefit local competition. U.S. companies brought little technology and low-skill and low-wage work. At the same time, quotas made it almost impossible for local companies to develop their own export products for the American market. In some places, local garment manufacturers were thriving before the Caribbean Basin Initiative crippled them. This pattern first played out in Jamaica.

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“At every single river in the city you will see people like that.” The poverty on display here is of the kind used to boast of the “opportunity” provided by the ZIPs. The Caribbean Basin Initiative didn’t create wealth for workers, but in Honduras, it did lead to the rise of a class of oligarchs who would exert a powerful right-leaning force on the nation’s politics. Many of the elite families like the Canahuatis and Facussés rose up in the 1980s on the business enabled by the Caribbean Basin Initiative. They made their wealth from the foreign investment that flowed through the garment export processing sector. So when the Honduran government attempted to improve conditions for workers, these elites were the people who had the most to lose, and they intervened.

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The story of Honduras’s emergence as a garment exporter began in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan moved to confront what he saw as a rising threat to U.S. interests—a communist drift in the Caribbean Basin. His two-pronged strategy was to consolidate U.S. military hegemony over the region, and to encourage the growth of export processing. He launched the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI), which granted military aid and one-way duty-free access to the U.S. market for a designated range of products. U.S. garment and textile interests sensed an opportunity. In the early 1980s, many U.S. garment producers were struggling to compete with cheap imports from Asia. The Caribbean Basin offered companies both cheap labor and geographical proximity, a manufacturing annex where they could make goods at more competitive prices.

Year 501 by Noam Chomsky

air traffic controllers' union, anti-communist, Bartolomé de las Casas, Berlin Wall, Bolshevik threat, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Caribbean Basin Initiative, classic study, colonial rule, corporate governance, cuban missile crisis, declining real wages, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, European colonialism, experimental subject, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Howard Zinn, invisible hand, land reform, land tenure, long peace, mass incarceration, means of production, Monroe Doctrine, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, price stability, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Simon Kuznets, strikebreaker, structural adjustment programs, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, union organizing, War on Poverty, working poor

And as noted, none of the state capitalist societies accept the principle of free movement of labor, a sine qua non of free market theory. Eastern Europe, or at least large parts of it, is to return to the Third World service role.21 The situation is reminiscent of Japan in the 1930s, or of the Reagan-Bush Caribbean Basin Initiative, which encourages open export-oriented economies in the region while keeping US protectionist barriers intact, undermining possible benefits of free trade for the targeted societies.22 The patterns are as pervasive as they are understandable. The US has watched developments in Eastern Europe with some discomfort.

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., 122, 147–48, 157, 212, 245, 286, 326–27 drug war and, 80 Gulf war and, 31, 52–53, 253 Haiti policy, 292–93, 295–97, 301 health care policy, 320 Latin America policy, 118, 125, 127–28, 134, 210, 251, 268 New World Order and, 61, 82–83, 114–15, 130–31, 141, 164 Vietnam policy, 347–50, 370, 372 Butler, Smedley, 278 Butterfield, Fox, 359 Caffery, Jefferson, 198 Calderón Guardia, Rafael Ángel, 248 Callejas Romero, Rafael Leonardo, 249 Calleo, David, 71 Calley, William, 358–359 Cambodia, 104, 176, 187, 369 child labor in, 241–242 Khmer Rouge genocide, 238, 348–51 Vietnamese invasion of, 349–51, 349–52, 369 Canada, 77, 180, 194, 366 colonialism in, 30, 33 health care in, 320–21 in New World Order, 79–80, 133, 217 Canning, George, 194 Carey, Peter, 189 Caribbean colonialism in, 7, 30, 34, 194, 215, 275–76 in New World Order, 133, 250, 330 See also individual countries Caribbean Basin Initiative, 114 Carnegie, Andrew, 78, 106, 389–93 Carr, Caleb, 363, 420n48 Carter, Jimmy, 71, 105, 117, 157, 166, 201–02, 348–51, 382 China policy, 369 Korea policy, 140 Latin America policy, 59, 299 Vietnam policy, 346 Castro, Fidel, xi, 199–200, 202–11, 225 Ceausescu, Nicolae, 141 Center for Defense Information (CDI), 102, 104 Center for Defense Trade, 147 Center of Latin American Studies, 119 Central American Committee on Water Resources, 247 Central America Report (CAR), 41, 119–21, 248–49, 264–66 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 40, 54, 57, 98, 104, 105, 408n17 actions in Brazil, 223–24 actions in Cambodia, 350 actions in China, 410n3 actions in Cuba, 199, 202–03 actions in Indonesia, 169–71, 173–74, 182 actions in Nicaragua, 246 actions in Vietnam, 176 in New World Order, 55, 63, 215–16 Chalabi, Ahmad, 126 Chamorro, Violeta, 119–20, 263, 266, 300 Chandler, Alfred, 146 chemical warfare, 42, 189, 277, 346, 355–57 Cheney, Dick, x, 68, 149, 348 Cherokees, 36–37, 315–16 Chicago school, 254, 261 Chicago Tribune, 118, 382, 384–85 child labor, 82, 111, 232, 241–43 Childress, Richard, 347 Chile, 57, 105, 171, 208, 214, 225, 392 coup in, 49–50, 169 neoliberalism in, 254–55, 260–61, 269, 344 China, 18, 31–32, 95, 175, 178 colonialism in, 7, 10, 20 Cultural Revolution, 293 Japanese invasion of Manchuria, 328–31, 341 in New World Order, 47, 103, 104, 140, 143, 149, 154, 369 opium trade in, 19, 313–14, 410n13 rape of Nanking, 329 support for Khmer Rouge, 349–51 Christian Science Monitor, 119, 180 Chun Doo-hwan, 140–41 Churchill, Winston, 32, 45, 84, 98, 163, 277 Civil War (US), 33, 366 Clairmonte, Frederick, 18 Clapham, J.H., 18 class war, 61, 70, 74, 78, 156, 379, 384, 386 Cleveland, Grover, 392 Clinton, Bill, 320 Clive, Robert, 10, 16 Cobban, Alfred, 28 Cockburn, Alexander, 372 Colby, William, 40–41, 182 Cold War, 46, 60, 93, 101–06, 220 end of, 52, 112, 121–25, 130–31, 141, 147, 291, 294, 349 relation to North-South conflict, 91, 98, 212 US policy in, 64, 223, 234, 251–53, 269, 331, 340 Collins, Joseph, 261 Collor de Mello, Fernando, 111, 256 Colombia, 119–22, 244 colonialism, 48, 91–92, 101, 216, 307, 343 British colonialism, vii–viii, 4–6, 8–22, 26–28, 274–75, 314, 361–62 Dutch colonialism, 7, 9–11, 13–14, 19, 26, 168, 362 Flemish colonialism, 28 French colonialism, 28, 95, 271–75, 281, 341, 345, 369, 374 Japanese colonialism, 4, 341, 343 neocolonialism, 3, 60–61, 76, 130, 172, 219 Portuguese colonialism, 6–7, 9, 11, 19, 180 settler colonialism, viii Spanish colonialism, 6–7, 9–10, 17, 42–44, 195, 273–74 US colonialism, ix, 14, 30–38, 43, 105, 197, 276–82, 314–19, 328, 334–38, 372 See also imperialism Columbus, Christopher, 6, 271–74 Colombian era, 3, 42, 215 Native American policy, 44, 364–65 Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, 339 Communism, 49–50 in Brazil, 220, 223–24, 230 in Chile, 50 in China, 143, 341 in Cuba, 199, 203–05 in Indonesia, 168–170, 174–75, 177–86 in Italy, 56 in Japan, 142 in Poland, 108 in Soviet Union, 111–13 in Spain, 101 US policy toward, 54, 66, 81, 93–98, 131, 150, 217, 235, 320, 331, 381, 388 in Vietnam, 346, 359–60, 366–70 See also Marxism; Soviet Union Conniff, Ruth, 384 Constable, Pamela, 205, 263, 295 Conyers, John, 300 Cooper, Marc, 269 Cortés, Hernán, 9, 15 Costa Rica, 119–20, 208, 245–48 Costigliola, Frank, 65 Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), 272, 288, 293, 299 counterinsurgency, 40, 235, 247, 331, 372 Cowell, Alan, 126 Cromer, Lord.

The Inequality Puzzle: European and US Leaders Discuss Rising Income Inequality by Roland Berger, David Grusky, Tobias Raffel, Geoffrey Samuels, Chris Wimer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Bear Stearns, Branko Milanovic, business cycle, Caribbean Basin Initiative, Celtic Tiger, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, double entry bookkeeping, equal pay for equal work, fear of failure, financial innovation, full employment, Gini coefficient, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, income inequality, invisible hand, Long Term Capital Management, long term incentive plan, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Money creation, offshore financial centre, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, proprietary trading, rent-seeking, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, time value of money, very high income

It’s an aerating device; I myself don’t think it’s contributed to greater inequality. Indeed, the countries of Africa, the Caribbean, what they want more than anything in the world is for markets to open up so they can sell their produce. It’s one of the reasons President Reagan was so popular in the Caribbean: one of the first things he did was the Caribbean Basin Initiative, which opened up the U.S. market for Caribbean fruits and vegetables. Edward Seaga of Jamaica was the first foreign head of state to visit Reagan in the White House. People see globalization happening, and they see bad things happening at the same time, and so they connect them. Some people in the U.S. labor movement blame globalization for a host of economic ills, but I don’t believe globalization is the cause.

Culture of Terrorism by Noam Chomsky

anti-communist, Bolshevik threat, Bretton Woods, Caribbean Basin Initiative, centre right, clean water, David Brooks, disinformation, failed state, Farzad Bazoft, guns versus butter model, land reform, Monroe Doctrine, risk tolerance, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, union organizing

Gruson’s report fails to observe that these are exactly the consequences predicted from the start by U.S. and Salvadoran government critics of the U.S.-initiated reform, which was imposed without any effort to engage or organize the poor and even bypassed Salvadoran government specialists. Like the Alliance for Progress, Reagan’s Caribbean Basin Initiative, and similar programs generally, the U.S.-imposed plan was a completely cynical effort; these programs are not instituted because of a sudden recognition of the suffering of the poor, but out of fear that they might respond to organizing appeals that would impel them to seek to extricate themselves from their misery in ways incompatible with the Fifth Freedom (so-called “Communism”).

Cocaine Nation: How the White Trade Took Over the World by Thomas Feiling

anti-communist, barriers to entry, Caribbean Basin Initiative, crack epidemic, deindustrialization, drug harm reduction, gentrification, illegal immigration, informal economy, inventory management, Kickstarter, land reform, Lao Tzu, mandatory minimum, moral panic, offshore financial centre, RAND corporation, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, Stanford prison experiment, trade route, upwardly mobile, yellow journalism

He brought food subsidies to an end, further devalued the Jamaican dollar and raised petrol prices. As unemployment rose and poverty deepened, the crime rate climbed still higher, prompting the government to get even tougher. By the mid-1980s, the Jamaican police were responsible for a third of the island’s murders. Seaga’s Caribbean Basin Initiative brought untaxed sweatshops to the island, the female workforce for which he supplied from JLP constituencies. The Prime Minister also launched a programme to revitalize Jamaican agriculture by supplying winter vegetables for the American market. The AGRO-21 programme was headed by Eli Tisona, an Israeli money-launderer for the Colombian Cali cartel.

The Rough Guide to Jamaica by Thomas, Polly,Henzell, Laura.,Coates, Rob.,Vaitilingam, Adam.

buttonwood tree, call centre, Caribbean Basin Initiative, centre right, colonial rule, computer age, ghettoisation, jitney, John Gilmore, Kickstarter, post-work, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, sustainable-tourism, trade route

The JLP in power 276 The first foreign leader to visit the newly elected President Ronald Reagan in Washington, Edward Seaga’s realignment of the two neighbouring countries was perhaps his most important change in policy. The US took steps to open its markets to foreign imports and to encourage outward investment, most notably with the enactment of the Caribbean Basin Initiative (economic aid in return for free elections and cooperative governments), and foreign capital began to find its way back to Jamaica. However, Seaga was obliged to continue the cutback of government services, and his honeymoon with the Jamaican people proved shortlived. A snap election in 1983 was boycotted by the PNP, but re-elected prime minister Seaga was unable to give the island’s economy the boost it required, and rising poverty and unemployment combined with his lack of charisma led to a fall in support.