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The
AGRIBUSINESS
EXAMINER Issue # 18 January 20, 1999
Monitoring Corporate Agribusiness From a Public Interest Perspective
A.V. Krebs
Editor\Publisher
Editors Note
A reminder to those who might wish to receive a weekly e-mail edition of
THE AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER, please provide your name and e-mail address.
At this time THE AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER is not available in printed form.
Although there is no subscription fee, donations will gladly be
accepted. Checks made out to A.V. Krebs, P.O. Box 2201, Everett,
Washington 98203-0201 will continue to be received with much gratitude.
CLINTON & CO.:
FIGHTING A CORPORATE AGRIBUSINESS-SPONSORED TRADE WAR
Any lingering doubts today that the citizens of the United States might
have that with the election of William Jefferson Clinton to the White
House in 1992 that they were giving corporate America a blank check
should by now easily be dispelled with the U.S. about to engage itself
in a major trade war with its closest allies in Europe so Clinton and
his Republican colleagues in the Congress can fulfill and satisfy a
corporate campaign payoff.
Put aside the fact that he has shown himself to be a chronic lair.
Put aside that some civil libertarians, like columnist Nat Hentoff, have
characterized his legacy as the president in this century who has
inflicted the most harm on our constitutional rights and liberties.
Put aside that he has proposed the first increase in the Pentagon's
budget since 1991 and the largest since the early Reagan days: $12
billion in new spending in 2000, and $110 billion over the next six
years.
Put aside, despite making a great show of one of his "signature"
programs -- his so-called long-term care initiative, ostensibly aimed at
the financially and emotionally devastating medical needs of millions of
frail and disabled Americans and their families it bears, in the words
of Robert Kuttner, writing recently in the New York Times, "all of the
marks of Clinton's signature -- the cynicism, the tokenism, the cheap
symbolic politics."
Even putting aside all these actions one fact still remains.
Richard Grasso, president of the New York Stock Exchange, stated that
fact clearly and succinctly at a recent New York city conference of
minority and white businessmen organized by the Rev. Jesse Jackson to
promote diversity on Wall Street and to honor Clinton. After making the
questionable claim that Dr. Martin Luther King was "surely smiling down
on the gathering" and "recognizing what you've done for this country,"
Grasso described how Clinton's presidency had so benefited "my little
corner of southern Manhattan."
Certainly if Chiquita International's CEO and Chairman of the Board Carl
H. Lindner had been in the audience he probably would have stood up and
lustily cheered Grasso's tribute. For it is on Lindner's behalf, or
rather his substantial political contributions to Clinton and his GOP
soul mates, that the U.S. is about to wage a trade war with the European
Union countries.
"I'M CHIQUITA BANANA AND I'VE COME TO SAY . . . "
In what has become a bitter trade fight involving bananas, the U.S. has
presented the World Trade Organization (WTO) with a hit list of $520
million in European imports, a list that would be subject to 100%
tariffs, ranging from Pecorino cheese made from sheep's milk, sweet
biscuits, bath salts, candles, handbags, felt paper, folding cartons,
greeting cards, lithographs, cashmere sweaters, cotton bed linen,
batteries for electric vehicles, coffee and tea makers and chandeliers.
The sanctions would be likely to come into force in March and hit
Britain and Italy hardest. U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky
said the $520 million represents the administration's estimate of the
amount of harm being done annually to U.S.-based banana companies in
terms of lost sales in Europe.
But let's be clear about the facts. For the facts show that there are
virtually no U.S. jobs here at stake here, there is no danger of a
further imbalance of U.S. trade, and there is no economic damage about
to befall the U.S. This is simply a case of Clinton & Co. seeking to
protect the financial interests of Lindner and a single multinational,
Chiquita, as opposed to the interests of thousands of small banana
farmers in the Eastern Caribbean and in Jamaica.
In July 1993, the European Union sought to complete its internal market
structure by introducing a single banana import regime by limiting its
total imports and segregated volumes between fruit from African,
Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and "dollar" bananas from central
America. Prior to these attempts to unify a patchwork of national
policies, Britain and France had given preferential access to imports
from their former colonies in the ACP region. Meanwhile, other
countries, including Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, where
consumers prefer "dollar" fruit, allowed unrestricted trade.
The new policy, however, angered leading US distributors of "dollar"
bananas, particularly Chiquita and Lindner. Its introduction coincided
with a slump in the Company's profits, caused partly by its decision to
step up production in the apparent belief that European was about to
open its market completely. Complaining the regime violated world trade
rules the U.S. protested twice to the old General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade (GATT).
Subsequently, the EU was able to call upon GATT's elastic procedures to
deflect the complaint. A third U.S. challenge, under the stricter
procedures of the World Trade Organization (WTO) was more successful as
the appellate body found against the banana regime in 1997. The EU,
however, was given until January, 1999 to comply with the decision, or
face the threat of legal trade retaliation by the U.S. and central
American banana producers.
The EU has been in the process of amending the regime and the WTO has
now set up a panel to examine whether a revised European Union banana
import regime complies with WTO rules. However, the US says its revised
policy does not comply with the WTO ruling. Chiquita, has said the new
arrangement will give them no better access to the EU market than the
old one.
E.U. Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan, however, is sharply critical
of what he terms narrow banana industry interests which have exerted a
disproportionate influence on U.S. trade policy through political
campaign financing. He said the Geneva-based WTO can be undermined as a
result.
"The right place to put that to the test is the WTO, which provides a
quite straightforward mechanism for doing exactly that. To say that
because of intense congressional pressure on the part of people who are
major contributors to the campaign funds, we are going to go outside the
WTO and threaten the livelihoods of lots and lots of people who have
absolutely nothing to do with this thing is, in my view, completely
unacceptable in today's world."
Nevertheless, at a December lunch with the leaders of the European
Union, Clinton threatened to approve the sanctions unless the Europeans
relented on their banana quotas. The Washington Post reported that White
House was so eager to show that the president was not consumed with his
own impeachment troubles, that aides offered reporters details of how
Clinton jousted with Brittan. Alluding to Sir Leon's accent, the
president declared that "the only thing that makes this discussion
almost tolerable is listening to you pronounce `bo-non-nas.'"
EU ambassador Roderick Abbott has also rejected U.S. offers of further
negotiations to settle the dispute. "There are two little problems,"
Abbott said in a message to the United States and its allies in Central
America. "One is that you are threatening us with $500 million worth of
retaliation and people don't negotiate very well under the threat of a
big stick. The other one is that you are the only people who say we have
to change."
Indeed, Bloomberg News Service reported back in December that Dole Food
Co., another major banana producer Clinton & Co. reportedly is backing
in its trade fight with the EU, has said that it actually has gained
market share under EU import rules and will thrive no matter how the
dispute is resolved. "We feel like we're pretty well-positioned," said
John Tate, a spokesman for the Westlake Village, California-based Dole.
"No matter how it comes out, we'll find a way to work productively in
that environment."
Thus, it is in almost the exclusive interest of Lindner that Clinton &
Co. are about to do battle with the European Union countries.
A "GRATEFUL" CARL H. LINDNER
According to a March 31, 1997 report by Michael Weisskoff in Time
Magazine two years prior "Lindner wanted U.S. Trade Representative
Mickey Kantor to help him pry open European markets, which rely on
various tariffs and trade barriers effectively to shut out Lindner's
bananas. Though hundreds of companies ask Washington to investigate
unfair trade practices, the U.S. Trade Representative accepts only about
14 cases each year. Even fewer are taken to Geneva for resolution by the
World Trade Organization. And only rarely do such cases make the cut
when hardly any U.S. jobs are at stake; Chiquita employs most of its
45,000 workers in Honduras and Guatemala. And yet Kantor took the case."
But, as Weiskoff adds, "You wouldn't know how grateful Lindner was by
records at the Federal Election Commission; he gave the Democratic
National Committee only $15,000 in the final 15 months of the campaign.
Instead, D.N.C. officials instructed Lindner to give directly to
state-party coffers, which are subject to far less public scrutiny than
federal-election accounts. On April 12, 1996, the day after Kantor asked
the WTO to examine Chiquita's grievance, Lindner and his top executives
began funneling more than $500,000 to about two dozen states from
Florida to California, campaign officials told Time."
Lindner also became one of the "Lincoln Bedroom 938" who slept overnight
in the Clinton White House. He attended a coffee with the president, and
was identified by Clinton's chief fund raiser as one of the 10 biggest
supporters of Clinton's re-election in 1996.
THE BANANA GUY
Carl H. Lindner Jr., 78, head of Chiquita, is worth $665 million,
according to Forbes Magazine, and also heads up American Financial
Group, a property and casualty insurance company based in Cincinnati
with $15.7 billion dollars in assets in 1997. In recent years Lindner
has also been a major financial contributor to both the Democratic and
Republican Party.
In the election cycle between January, 1997 and June, 1998 American
Financial Group contributed a total of $765,000 in "soft money" to the
Republican and Democratic parties, ranking third in such contributions
behind Philip Morris ($1,769,625) and Amway ($1,312,500).
It was Lindner's generous political campaign contributions that
occasioned a hilarious exchange between President Bill Clinton and the
comedian Paula Poundstone in 1995 and recorded on the January 30, 1996
PBS documentary "So You Want to Buy A President."
Commentator Robert Krulwich: "Some of you might have missed this on
television this fall, but it was a prime time broadcast of a gala fund
raiser from Ford's Theater, the place where Lincoln was shot, and in the
front row is the President of the United States and up on the stage was
the comedian Paula Poundstone and she was trying to figure out who gets
to sit next to the President?"
Paula Poundstone: "What determines who gets which seat? Do you do the
whole seating chart?" (Laughter) "Do you know who that is behind your
head very well? Who is that?"
Gala Hostess Seated in the Audience Next to the President: "Carl
Lindner"
Paula Poundstone: "Carl Lindner, I'm sorry I'm not familiar. Alright,
what made you give him that seat?" (Laughter) "Alright now, tell us who
it is."
Hostess: "A whole lot of money!" (Laughter)
Paula Poundstone: "A whole lot of money!" (Applause and laughter) "Carl,
I'm sure it was much deeper than that, sir. It was money and love little
buddy, don't you worry." (Laughter) "What's Carl's role in the
community? Carl, why do you have so much money?" (Laughter) "Is that
rude to ask?" (Applause) "Sir, what do you do for a living, I know I
should know, but since I don't know, would you tell me? Mr. President,
do you know who Carl Lindner is?" (Laughter)
President Clinton: (Nods yes)
Paula Poundstone: "Would you mind telling me!"
President Clinton: "It's a secret!"
Paula Poundstone: "It's a secret!!!" (Laughter)
President Clinton: "He's in bananas, sort of like you are."
Paula Poundstone: "He's in bananas! Is that true, sir? He's what? He's
the Chiquita Banana guy! Gee sir, without the fruit on your head, sir, I
didn't recognize you." (Laughter and applause) "Is that true? Why does
the President know the banana guy?"
Robert Krulwich: "Now, there is an interesting question: why does the
President know the banana guy? . . . "
A NOTORIOUS PAST . . . AND PRESENT
For anyone familiar with the history of 20th century Central American
political intrigue, economics and land ownership it should come as no
surprise that Chiquita Brands International Inc., currently a
multinational billion dollar exporter of bananas, according to a
controversial year-long investigation by the The Cincinnati Enquirer,
published in 1998, has engaged in questionable business practices in the
hemispheric countries where it grows and buys its fruit.
The history of the company, recently known as United Brands and before
that the infamous United Fruit Company, now currently under the control
of Cincinnati businessman Carl H. Lindner Jr., Chiquita's chairman and
chief executive officer, and his family, is notorious.
As author Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and now professor
of English at University of California, Berkeley has pointed out, the
twentieth-century banana republics of Central America can be seen as
"creations of the fruit companies" (such as United Fruit and Standard
Fruit and Steamship Co.) and the New Orleans organized crime "milieu."
"This symbiosis of the fruit companies, their local client rulers, the
U.S. military and organized crime, became institutionalized with the
passage of years," in Central America.
In addition to this "symbiosis" the past 100 years of struggle for
economic and social justice by the landless and peasants in such
countries as El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and
Panama has been punctuated by the intervention of the U.S. Marines and
in recent years the U.S.Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in defense of
such unholy alliances.
In a May 3, 1998 copyright report The Enquirer summed up its year-long
investigation of the Cincinnati-based company. The paper sent reporters
to numerous Central American banana plantations as well as to Canada,
Belgium, New York and Washington to compile its report.
Chiquita, through its Washington, D.C. hired law firm Kirkland and Ellis
immediately disputed the suggestions in the Enquirer series that any of
Chiquita practices are or were improper."The information contained in
the Enquirer's story was selectively edited, incomplete and presented
out of context and portrays a highly inaccurate image of Chiquita," the
company told Dow Jones News Service.
Later, the Enquirer renounced the articles by Michael Gallagher and
Cameron McWhirter because of the reported theft of company voice mail by
Gallagher, apologized and paid Chiquita more than $10 million to settle
any claims. Gallagher was fired, and later pleaded guilty to
intercepting voice mail. He could face up to 2 1/2 years in prison and a
$7,500 fine at sentencing March 19
In its front-page ìapologyî, published for three days on the Enquirerís
front page as part of the Chiquita agreement, the paper said that it
renounced the articles and that they "created a false and misleading
impression of Chiquita business practices." The statement and the
paper's settlement before a suit had even been filed by Chiquita left
the paper's own employees both bewildered and confused.
"We still donít even understand if the paper is saying the charges are
untrue or not," a young Enquirer employee told the New York Times on
condition of anonymity. "The whole thing just leaves everyone puzzled."
The Enquirer investigation, however, revealed that:
* Chiquita used elaborate legal structures and front companies to get
around laws limiting foreign ownership of land in Honduras and other
countries. Citing records showing that Chiquita expanded control of
banana-producing lands through companies that appeared to be locally
owned but actually were controlled by overseas trusts directed by
Chiquita subsidiaries.
By hiding behind dozens of supposedly independent companies, Chiquita
thwarted labor unions as well as expanding onto lands that were off
limits to foreign ownership, the Enquirer reported.
* Chiquita and its subsidiaries engaged in the use of chemical poisons
that threatened the health of workers and nearby residents, despite an
agreement with an environmental group to adhere to safe practices.
* A worker on a Chiquita subsidiary farm died in November 1997 after
exposure to toxic chemicals in a banana field, according to a local
coroner's report.
*Hundreds of people in a Costa Rican barrio - Barrio Paris, near San
Jose - have been exposed to a toxic chemical emitting from the factory
of a Chiquita subsidiary, Polymer Plastipak. The plant makes plastic
bags impregnated with a chemical poison called chlorpyrifos, used to
protect bananas from insects, that can cause paralysis, nerve damage and
death in humans. The company conceded only that the plant emits a "bad
odor."
* Employees of Chiquita and a subsidiary were involved in an alleged
bribery scheme in Colombia that has come to the attention of the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission. Two employees were forced to resign.
* Chiquita fruit-transport ships have been used to smuggle cocaine into
Europe. Authorities seized more than a ton of cocaine from seven
Chiquita ships in 1997. The company claimed it was unaware and did not
approve of the cocaine shipments, but the problem was traced to lax
security on its Colombian docks.
* Security guards have used force to enforce their authority on
plantations operated or controlled by Chiquita. In one case, Chiquita
called in the Honduran military to enforce a court order to evict
residents of a farm village. The village was bulldozed and villagers run
out at gunpoint. On a palm plantation controlled by a Chiquita
subsidiary in Honduras, a man was shot to death and another man injured
by security guards using an illegal automatic weapon.
* U.S. federal regulators are investigating Chiquita's business
practices. In April, 1998 investigators issued multiple subpoenas to
Chiquita for documents.
Reaction to the Enquirer's investigation was swift from a member of the
European Parliament . Glenys Kinnock, who represents Wales in the
European Parliament, told The Enquirer that she has appealed to the
15-nation union's lead agency in dealing with the banana industry.
Kinnock is a longtime opponent of Chiquita's efforts to roll back EU
banana protections.
In April, 1998 the Chiriqui Land Company, an affiliate of Chiquita
Brands, suspended 1,700 striking workers, saying a recent strike made
their services unnecessary. According to Fred Johnson, the general
director of the company's Pacific division, "there have been no firings,
these are temporary suspensions' under Panamanian labor laws."
The company's 4,500 workers in Panama walked out in February,1998
charging that the company violated a contract signed the previous
October. They say the company's decision to use an Atlantic rather than
a Pacific pier for exports has cost 300 jobs. Chiquita says it no
longer needs the services of packers and people who make its crates
because it hadn't been exporting bananas since February. The strike,
according to the company, has cost Chiquita more than $15 million.
Panamanian labor laws allow a company to suspend a worker "if his
services are no longer needed, and that's what we've done," Johnson
said.
"Chiquita is used to getting a favorable serving of legal decisions from
these countries," Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric
Affairs, a Washington-based research group that specializes in Latin
American issues, told Dow Jones in a telephone interview. "Chiquita is
the ugly American . . . It has gone out of its way to underpay local
banana producers, to break unions," Birns said.
--------------9A0E9CF490513BC38E7EC5CA
<HTML>
<B></B>
<P><B><FONT SIZE=+1>The</FONT></B>
<BR><B><FONT SIZE=+2>AGRIBUSINESS</FONT></B>
<BR><B><FONT
SIZE=+2>EXAMINER </FONT> </B>
Issue # 18 January 20, 1999
<P><I>Monitoring Corporate Agribusiness From a Public Interest Perspective</I>
<BR>
<P>A.V. Krebs
<BR><I>Editor\Publisher</I>
<BR>
<P>
<B>Editors Note</B>
<BR>A reminder to those who might wish to receive a weekly e-mail edition
of THE AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER, please provide your name and e-mail
address. At this time THE AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER is not available in printed
form. Although there is no subscription fee, donations will gladly be accepted.
Checks made out to A.V. Krebs, P.O. Box 2201, Everett, Washington 98203-0201
will continue to be received with much gratitude.
<BR>
<P><FONT SIZE=+1>CLINTON & CO.:</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=+1>FIGHTING A CORPORATE AGRIBUSINESS-SPONSORED TRADE WAR</FONT>
<P>Any lingering doubts today that the citizens of the United States might
have that with the election of William Jefferson Clinton to the White House
in 1992 that they were giving corporate America a blank check should by
now easily be dispelled with the U.S. about to engage itself in a major
trade war with its closest allies in Europe so Clinton and his Republican
colleagues in the Congress can fulfill and satisfy a corporate campaign
payoff.
<P>Put aside the fact that he has shown himself to be a chronic lair.
<P>Put aside that some civil libertarians, like columnist Nat Hentoff,
have characterized his legacy as the president in this century who has
inflicted the most harm on our constitutional rights and liberties.
<P>Put aside that he has proposed the first increase in the Pentagon's
budget since 1991 and the largest since the early Reagan days: $12 billion
in new spending in 2000, and $110 billion over the next six years.
<P>Put aside, despite making a great show of one of his "signature" programs
-- his so-called long-term care initiative, ostensibly aimed at the financially
and emotionally devastating medical needs of millions of frail and disabled
Americans and their families it bears, in the words of Robert Kuttner,
writing recently in the <U>New York Times</U>, "all of the marks of Clinton's
signature -- the cynicism, the tokenism, the cheap symbolic politics."
<P>Even putting aside all these actions one fact still remains.
<P>Richard Grasso, president of the New York Stock Exchange, stated that
fact clearly and succinctly at a recent New York city conference
of minority and white businessmen organized by the Rev. Jesse Jackson to
promote diversity on Wall Street and to honor Clinton. After making the
questionable claim that Dr. Martin Luther King was "surely smiling down
on the gathering" and "recognizing what you've done for this country,"
Grasso described how Clinton's presidency had so benefited "my little corner
of southern Manhattan."
<P>Certainly if Chiquita International's CEO and Chairman of the Board
Carl H. Lindner had been in the audience he probably would have stood up
and lustily cheered Grasso's tribute. For it is on Lindner's behalf, or
rather his substantial political contributions to Clinton and his GOP soul
mates, that the U.S. is about to wage a trade war with the European Union
countries.
<BR>
<P><FONT SIZE=+1>"I'M CHIQUITA BANANA AND I'VE COME TO SAY . . . "</FONT>
<P>In what has become a bitter trade fight involving bananas, the U.S.
has presented the World Trade Organization (WTO) with a hit list of $520
million in European imports, a list that would be subject to 100%
tariffs, ranging from Pecorino cheese made from sheep's milk, sweet biscuits,
bath salts, candles, handbags, felt paper, folding cartons, greeting cards,
lithographs, cashmere sweaters, cotton bed linen, batteries for electric
vehicles, coffee and tea makers and chandeliers.
<P>The sanctions would be likely to come into force in March and hit Britain
and Italy hardest. U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said the
$520 million represents the administration's estimate of the amount of
harm being done annually to U.S.-based banana companies in terms of lost
sales in Europe.
<P>But let's be clear about the facts. For the facts show that there are
virtually no U.S. jobs here at stake here, there is no danger of a further
imbalance of U.S. trade, and there is no economic damage about to befall
the U.S. This is simply a case of Clinton & Co. seeking to protect
the financial interests of Lindner and a single multinational, Chiquita,
as opposed to the interests of thousands of small banana farmers in the
Eastern Caribbean and in Jamaica.
<P>In July 1993, the European Union sought to complete its internal market
structure by introducing a single banana import regime by limiting its
total imports and segregated volumes between fruit from African, Caribbean
and Pacific (ACP) countries and "dollar" bananas from central America.
Prior to these attempts to unify a patchwork of national policies, Britain
and France had given preferential access to imports from their former colonies
in the ACP region. Meanwhile, other countries, including Germany, the Netherlands
and Sweden, where consumers prefer "dollar" fruit, allowed unrestricted
trade.
<P>The new policy, however, angered leading US distributors of "dollar"
bananas, particularly Chiquita and Lindner. Its introduction coincided
with a slump in the Company's profits, caused partly by its decision to
step up production in the apparent belief that European was about to open
its market completely. Complaining the regime violated world trade rules
the U.S. protested twice to the old General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT).
<P>Subsequently, the EU was able to call upon GATT's elastic procedures
to deflect the complaint. A third U.S. challenge, under the stricter procedures
of the World Trade Organization (WTO) was more successful as the appellate
body found against the banana regime in 1997. The EU, however, was given
until January, 1999 to comply with the decision, or face the threat of
legal trade retaliation by the U.S. and central American banana producers.
<P>The EU has been in the process of amending the regime and the WTO has
now set up a panel to examine whether a revised European Union banana import
regime complies with WTO rules. However, the US says its revised policy
does not comply with the WTO ruling. Chiquita, has said the new arrangement
will give them no better access to the EU market than the old one.
<P>E.U. Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan, however, is sharply critical
of what he terms narrow banana industry interests which have exerted a
disproportionate influence on U.S. trade policy through political campaign
financing. He said the Geneva-based WTO can be undermined as a result.
<P>"The right place to put that to the test is the WTO, which provides
a quite straightforward mechanism for doing exactly that. To say
that because of intense congressional pressure on the part of people who
are major contributors to the campaign funds, we are going to go outside
the WTO and threaten the livelihoods of lots and lots of people who have
absolutely nothing to do with this thing is, in my view, completely
unacceptable in today's world."
<P>Nevertheless, at a December lunch with the leaders of the European Union,
Clinton threatened to approve the sanctions unless the Europeans relented
on their banana quotas. <U>The Washington Post</U> reported that White
House was so eager to show that the president was not consumed with his
own impeachment troubles, that aides offered reporters details of how Clinton
jousted with Brittan. Alluding to Sir Leon's accent, the president declared
that "the only thing that makes this discussion almost tolerable is listening
to you pronounce `bo-non-nas.'"
<P>EU ambassador Roderick Abbott has also rejected U.S. offers of further
negotiations to settle the dispute. "There are two little problems," Abbott
said in a message to the United States and its allies in Central America.
"One is that you are threatening us with $500 million worth of retaliation
and people don't negotiate very well under the threat of a big stick. The
other one is that you are the only people who say we have to change."
<P>Indeed, Bloomberg News Service reported back in December that Dole Food
Co., another major banana producer Clinton & Co. reportedly is backing
in its trade fight with the EU, has said that it actually has gained market
share under EU import rules and will thrive no matter how the dispute is
resolved. "We feel like we're pretty well-positioned," said John Tate,
a spokesman for the Westlake Village, California-based Dole. "No matter
how it comes out, we'll find a way to work productively in that environment."
<P>Thus, it is in almost the exclusive interest of Lindner that Clinton
& Co. are about to do battle with the European Union countries.
<BR>
<P><FONT SIZE=+1>A "GRATEFUL" CARL H. LINDNER</FONT>
<P>According to a March 31, 1997 report by Michael Weisskoff in <U>Time
Magazine</U> two years prior "Lindner wanted U.S. Trade Representative
Mickey Kantor to help him pry open European markets, which rely on various
tariffs and trade barriers effectively to shut out Lindner's bananas. Though
hundreds of companies ask Washington to investigate unfair trade practices,
the U.S. Trade Representative accepts only about 14 cases each year. Even
fewer are taken to Geneva for resolution by the World Trade Organization.
And only rarely do such cases make the cut when hardly any U.S. jobs are
at stake; Chiquita employs most of its 45,000 workers in Honduras and Guatemala.
And yet Kantor took the case."
<P>But, as Weiskoff adds, "You wouldn't know how grateful Lindner was by
records at the Federal Election Commission; he gave the Democratic National
Committee only $15,000 in the final 15 months of the campaign. Instead,
D.N.C. officials instructed Lindner to give directly to state-party coffers,
which are subject to far less public scrutiny than federal-election accounts.
On April 12, 1996, the day after Kantor asked the WTO to examine Chiquita's
grievance, Lindner and his top executives began funneling more than $500,000
to about two dozen states from Florida to California, campaign officials
told <U>Time</U>."
<P>Lindner also became one of the "Lincoln Bedroom 938" who slept overnight
in the Clinton White House. He attended a coffee with the president, and
was identified by Clinton's chief fund raiser as one of the 10 biggest
supporters of Clinton's re-election in 1996.
<P><FONT SIZE=+1>THE BANANA GUY</FONT>
<P>Carl H. Lindner Jr., 78, head of Chiquita, is worth $665 million, according
to <U>Forbes Magazine</U>, and also heads up American Financial Group,
a property and casualty insurance company based in Cincinnati with $15.7
billion dollars in assets in 1997. In recent years Lindner has also been
a major financial contributor to both the Democratic and Republican Party.
<P>In the election cycle between January, 1997 and June, 1998 American
Financial Group contributed a total of $765,000 in "soft money" to the
Republican and Democratic parties, ranking third in such contributions
behind Philip Morris ($1,769,625) and Amway ($1,312,500).
<P>It was Lindner's generous political campaign contributions that occasioned
a hilarious exchange between President Bill Clinton and the comedian Paula
Poundstone in 1995 and recorded on the January 30, 1996 PBS documentary
"So You Want to Buy A President."
<P><I>Commentator Robert Krulwich</I>: "Some of you might have missed this
on television this fall, but it was a prime time broadcast of a gala fund
raiser from Ford's Theater, the place where Lincoln was shot, and in the
front row is the President of the United States and up on the stage was
the comedian Paula Poundstone and she was trying to figure out who gets
to sit next to the President?"
<P><I>Paula Poundstone:</I> "What determines who gets which seat? Do you
do the whole seating chart?" (Laughter) "Do you know who that is behind
your head very well? Who is that?"
<P><I>Gala Hostess Seated in the Audience Next to the President</I>: "Carl
Lindner"
<P><I>Paula Poundstone</I>: "Carl Lindner, I'm sorry I'm not familiar.
Alright, what made you give him that seat?" (Laughter) "Alright now, tell
us who it is."
<P><I>Hostess</I>: "A whole lot of money!" (Laughter)
<P><I>Paula Poundstone</I>: "A whole lot of money!" (Applause and laughter)
"Carl, I'm sure it was much deeper than that, sir. It was money and love
little buddy, don't you worry." (Laughter) "What's Carl's role in the community?
Carl, why do you have so much money?" (Laughter) "Is that rude to ask?"
(Applause) "Sir, what do you do for a living, I know I should know, but
since I don't know, would you tell me? Mr. President, do you know who Carl
Lindner is?" (Laughter)
<P><I>President Clinton</I>: (Nods yes)
<P><I>Paula Poundstone</I>: "Would you mind telling me!"
<P><I>President Clinton</I>: "It's a secret!"
<P><I>Paula Poundstone</I>: "It's a secret!!!" (Laughter)
<P><I>President Clinton</I>: "He's in bananas, sort of like you are."<I></I>
<P><I>Paula Poundstone</I>: "He's in bananas! Is that true, sir? He's what?
He's the Chiquita Banana guy! Gee sir, without the fruit on your head,
sir, I didn't recognize you." (Laughter and applause) "Is that true? Why
does the President know the banana guy?"
<P><I>Robert Krulwich</I>: "Now, there is an interesting question: why
does the President know the banana guy? . . . "
<BR>
<P><FONT SIZE=+1>A NOTORIOUS PAST . . . AND PRESENT</FONT>
<P>For anyone familiar with the history of 20th century Central American
political intrigue, economics and land ownership it should come as no surprise
that Chiquita Brands International Inc., currently a multinational billion
dollar exporter of bananas, according to a controversial year-long investigation
by the <U>The Cincinnati Enquirer</U>, published in 1998, has engaged in
questionable business practices in the hemispheric countries where it
grows and buys its fruit.
<P>The history of the company, recently known as United Brands and before
that the infamous United Fruit Company, now currently under the control
of Cincinnati businessman Carl H. Lindner Jr., Chiquita's chairman
and chief executive officer, and his family, is notorious.
<P>As author Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and now professor
of English at University of California, Berkeley has pointed out, the twentieth-century
banana republics of Central America can be seen as "creations of the fruit
companies" (such as United Fruit and Standard Fruit and Steamship Co.)
and the New Orleans organized crime "milieu."
<P>"This symbiosis of the fruit companies, their local client rulers, the
U.S. military and organized crime, became institutionalized with the passage
of years," in Central America.
<P>In addition to this "symbiosis" the past 100 years of struggle for economic
and social justice by the landless and peasants in such countries as El
Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama has been
punctuated by the intervention of the U.S. Marines and in recent years
the U.S.Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in defense of such unholy alliances.
<P>In a May 3, 1998 copyright report The <U>Enquirer </U>summed up its
year-long investigation of the Cincinnati-based company. The paper sent
reporters to numerous Central American banana plantations as well
as to Canada, Belgium, New York and Washington to compile its report.
<P>Chiquita, through its Washington, D.C. hired law firm Kirkland and Ellis
immediately disputed the suggestions in the <U>Enquirer</U> series that
any of Chiquita practices are or were improper."The information contained
in the <U>Enquirer's</U> story was selectively edited, incomplete and presented
out of context and portrays a highly inaccurate image of Chiquita," the
company told Dow Jones News Service.
<P>Later, the <U>Enquirer</U> renounced the articles by Michael Gallagher
and Cameron McWhirter because of the reported theft of company voice mail
by Gallagher, apologized and paid Chiquita more than $10 million to settle
any claims. Gallagher was fired, and later pleaded guilty to intercepting
voice mail. He could face up to 2 1/2 years in prison and a $7,500 fine
at sentencing March 19
<P>In its front-page “apology”, published for three days on the <U>Enquirer’s</U>
front page as part of the Chiquita agreement, the paper said that it renounced
the articles and that they "created a false and misleading impression of
Chiquita business practices." The statement and the paper's settlement
before a suit had even been filed by Chiquita left the paper's own employees
both bewildered and confused.
<P>"We still don’t even understand if the paper is saying the charges are
untrue or not," a young <U>Enquirer</U> employee told the <U>New York Times</U>
on condition of anonymity. "The whole thing just leaves everyone puzzled."
<P>The <U>Enquirer </U>investigation, however, revealed that:
<P>* Chiquita used elaborate legal structures and front companies to get
around laws limiting foreign ownership of land in Honduras and other countries.
Citing records showing that Chiquita expanded control of banana-producing
lands through companies that appeared to be locally owned but actually
were controlled by overseas trusts directed by Chiquita subsidiaries.
<P>By hiding behind dozens of supposedly independent companies, ChiquitaCalifornia
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