The Corporate Stranglehold on Commodities Markets

The term "producer," like its counterpart "consumer," becomes trivialized when abstracted from the corporate forces which control, impinge upon, and inflect the growth and trajectories of both. While Malaysia is a country in which cocoa is produced, in much the same way as the Philippines is a country in which bananas are produced, in reality the bulk of these two commodities are produced for and marketed globally by three to six transnational corporations (TNCs). This pattern of ownership and control by TNCs has become the New International Economic Order for almost all primary and manufactured commodities on the global market since the early 1960s, as UNCTAD data so clearly demonstrate.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website

Business · Control (management) · Economics · Economy · Management · Order (exchange) · Finance · Global trade and economics