Flawed research at foundation of CalExit campaign began with California strawberries
I co-founded the CalExit movement with Marcus Ruiz Evans, who toured California promoting a self-published book full of flawed research upon which we launched our campaign for California independence.
When I first met Marcus Ruiz Evans, he had recently published an updated version of his book and had several copies laying around his apartment. As an aspiring author myself, I was impressed with the sheer size of the book even if the cover was not what I would have expected from a reputable publisher. However, flipping through the pages, I quickly came to learn that the book was self-published. Not only did the cover appear to be designed by Mr. Evans himself but the text was at least double spaced, which explained why it was as thick as many versions of the modern Bible. I had never seen a text with such wide spacing between the lines. The text also contained multiple errors that would have easily been corrected had it been proofread prior to printing.
I don't mean to criticize self-published books, but the things I noticed about Mr. Evans’ book stuck out to me because I had just self-published my own book telling the story of my very public change of heart on the issue of civil marriage equality a few years prior and had the very same issues. I designed my own cover even though I'm not a graphic designer and I rushed my story to publication without hiring a proofreader. When I received the printed copies of my book, I was as excited as I assume Evans was when he received his, but reading through my printed text, I quickly found spelling mistakes. You see, when you proofread your own work, it is much more difficult to notice mistakes because your mind fills in the blanks with what it knows you previously wrote and expects to see, so I regretted not having had another set of eyes look through it before I had it published.
One of the issues Evans always highlighted from his book was the sale of California strawberries to China. California-grown strawberries, he argued to me and virtually at every public appearance we made, was one reason California should become more independent (but not an independent country; he never called for outright secession until 2015 after I encouraged him to be bold and stop with the half measures). Evans bemoaned the inability of the federal government to approve trade deals, and that California strawberry farmers suffered as a result. Evans was right that the United States offers a comparatively difficult trade environment. At the time of our campaign, we as a country failed to rank even in the top 20 of best trade environments according to the Enabling Trade Index, a report by the World Economic Forum and the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation that measures and ranks countries on how successful they have been in building an environment to facilitate trade.
Evans complained that it took the United States ten years (emphasis his) for the federal government to approve that strawberry trade deal and he would harp on that point as justification for why California should be more independent (Evans envisioned a California empowered to make its own trade and immigration policy while remaining in the United States even though such a special status for California would violate the principles of federalism that have each state on equal footing). Evans explained that if California was more independent, it could sign its own trade deals so that California farmers could finally sell their strawberries in mainland China. Unfortunately, none of that was possible because California, the world’s fifth largest economy, was stuck with the cumbersome American trade system and Washington decided to whom California could sell its strawberries, not Sacramento.
The problem, and this is a recurring theme I ran into throughout my relationship with Evans and will continue to elaborate on in the future, is that his research was flawed and rarely held up to any scrutiny. The case he made for California-grown strawberries supported my thesis that California should be an independent country, so I unfortunately never questioned the research. When eventually I did my own factchecking, what I learned turned the story completely on its face and shook my faith in Evans’ research and the contents of his book.
In fact, the ten-year delay Evans bemoaned was not because of American trade policy, or the federal government's inability or some nefarious American conspiracy to prevent California farmers from selling their strawberries to China. It was because China itself didn't want California strawberries to flood the Chinese market and Beijing prohibited their importation in order to protect Chinese strawberry farmers.
This is a quite common situation with respect to developing countries and their trade relations with countries of the developed world. As is often the case, the United States and Europe encourage developing countries to sign free trade agreements that prohibit these countries from enacting protectionist trade policies such as tariffs on foreign produce. In exchange, foreign-grown fruits, vegetables, and other food products are imported into these poor, developing countries and the people enjoy the new low prices. Major American and European farmers sell their excess crops and local consumers in faraway lands get cheap food. Sounds like a win-win.
However, it’s not that simple. Cameroon once signed a free trade agreement allowing the tariff-free import of foreign-grown produce into the central African country. Onions from the Netherlands and garlic from China flooded the market, driving prices down. That was good for consumers, but local individual family farms were unable to compete and were consequently forced to switch to other crops that weren’t being imported into the country while other family farmers lost their livelihoods altogether. The same was true for chicken farmers, who couldn’t complete with the flood of frozen chicken parts being imported into the country from abroad.
China only started large-scale production of strawberries in the 1980s and it is important to distinguish fresh strawberries from processed ones. Almost all of China’s fresh, locally grown strawberries are consumed in China while almost all of its processed strawberries (such as those that are packaged and frozen) are exported, including to the United States. The Chinese government didn't want fresh California-grown strawberries to threaten the new, locally grown, fresh strawberry market in China. It was this protectionist trade policy, not some burdensome American trade agency or the inability of the federal government to advocate on behalf of California farmers, that was responsible for this ten-year delay Evans bemoaned. Pure Chinese mercantilism. Unless, of course, Evans envisioned Washington forcing Beijing to accept California-grown strawberries into China to the detriment of their own new, rapidly growing strawberry market.
There is another depth to just how flawed Evans’ research was with respect to these strawberries. In 2008 China agreed to temporarily lift its ban on imported California-grown strawberries. The decision was newsworthy and made headlines in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, as well as in other major publications, and was a victory for the California Strawberry Commission.
However, negotiations between Chinese trade officials and the commission began only after Chinese athletes voted for strawberries as one of the fruits they wanted to eat during the Olympics. It was to accommodate these wishes of Chinese athletes, not the California Strawberry Commission’s desire to expand their market, that China agreed to temporarily lift its ban on California strawberries from July through September of that year. Again, more of China making decisions based on what is good for China. Even so, this trade deal took less than two—not ten—years to finalize and the commission negotiated directly with Chinese trade officials themselves. Any delays in finalizing the deal that upset Evans was on this California commission, not on Washington trade bureaucrats.
However, there is cause for Evans to be relieved. The California Strawberry Commission apparently gained full access to the Chinese market in 2016 and California farmers started shipping their berries to mainland China in 2017 – ten years, as Evans would say, after the Watsonville-based commission applied for access to China in the first place, and more than five years after Evans self-published his book.