Question

As you prepare to view Life + Debt which has been labeled as a  poor documentary, since it shows just one side of the story and makes a caricature of what is a complex issue - that of globalization. This documentary continues the conceptualization of Third World countries as passive actors in the global political economy. However armed with your knowledge of the global economy, and the place that Third World now occupy, please answer the following question:

1. In two paragraph Identify the failures to embrace the caribbean region for trade opportunities using scholarly and APA standard.

Answer 1

While the third world as a whole has made massive strides in terms of their contribution, participation and voice in the world economy, mostly led by Asian and some African countries, the Caribbean region has not had the same success. It is still not very well integrated into the world economy and its potential remains untapped (Ed Kennedy, 2019)¹. The main reasons for this are discussed in the following paragraph.

The size of the market is limited, with the total population being only 43 million (World Population Prospects, 2017)². This makes it difficult to have a sustained high level of economic activity. Most of the countries in the region also produce the same type of goods and services, such as bananas and tourism, making it difficult to have complementary economic activity going on. Not to mention this drives down the prices and the countries compete among each other( Annmicha Blugh, 2017)³. Even if the Caribbean could produce a wide variety of goods, the transportation costs would make a lot of them at a severe competitive disadvantage. The low volumes and great distances drive the costs of exporting very high. Finally, the Caribbean lies in the part of natural disasters and often results in destruction of large part of the region's economy. (World Bank, 2019)⁴

The above reasons altogether result in the lesser realization of trade opportunities in the Caribbean region.

1. https://stluciastar.com/the-caribbean-economy-in-2019-growth-setbacks-and-future-directions/
2. https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/DataQuery/
3. https://bizfluent.com/list-7422900-economic-activities-caribbean.html
4. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/caribbean/overview