Antigua and Barbuda’s online gambling battle with USA to continue
There’s a long and complicated history to Antigua and Barbuda’s trade dispute with the United States over their online gambling ban.
For a brief background you can read this post. For a more detailed overview you can read the World Trade Organization’s summary of the dispute to date here.
The super condensed version goes something like this…
The tiny Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda (population 90,000) is one of the world’s major online gambling licensing jurisdictions, making it (online gambling) a very significant industry in both employment and GDP terms. Attempts by US authorities to restrict US player access to online gambling services over the last decade have had a severely detrimental effect on this industry, reducing employment from a peak of 3,000 in the year 2000 to around 400 today. Revenues have likewise fallen drastically.
Following proceedings initiated by Antigua’s government, the Word Trade Organization (“WTO”) ruled in 2004 and 2005 that US federal laws restricting online gambling were in violation of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and in 2007 they (the WTO) ruled that Antigua had the right to impose $21 million in retaliatory trade sanctions annually. This fell considerably short of the $3.4 billion they were seeking.
That pretty much gets us to where we are today…Antigua still very unhappy about the decimation of a once thriving and growing industry, which combined with other financial misadventures like the Allen Stanford affair and GFC, have put them in a bit of fiscal difficulty; the WTO in agreement that the US ban is a trade violation, but their remedy would cause about as much concern in Washington as a fart in an elevator.
But Antigua aren’t giving up on this fight. This week their Finance Minister, Harold Lovell told news services that after many years trying unsuccessfully to negotiate a fair settlement with US trade representatives, they are going to formally announce intentions to pursue punitive action (ie impose the $21 million in trade sanctions).
“We are resolved that absent a fair settlement that this is the route we will take…We have basically been driven over our fiscal cliff …. We feel that we really have had our backs pushed right up against the wall,” he told the Associated Press.
Can’t see any of this having an effect on US net gambling policy.
But good on Antigua for not giving up.
Related pages from Livedealer.org:
Antigua has been involved in illegal arms trading, Ponzi Schemes and the expropriation of foreign property. For a “country” of less than 100,000 people, they have caused a massive amount of financial and security problems for the rest of the world.
Better the US simply legalize internet gambling, and regulate it here, rather than leaving it up to dangerous rogue third world bad actors.
Hi GoodJobBob.
When you say Antigua, are you referring to the government or mischievous countrymen like Ponzi king Allen Stanford?
Let me put it this way, the local take on the country’s motto “Each Endevouring, All Achieving” is “Each Embezzling, All A ‘Theving”
Sir Allen is only the latest and greatest, unless you want to count John Allen Mohammed, who recruited and trained Lee Malvo on Antigua (while supporting himself by selling genuine Antiguan passports to Allah only knows who.)