Trade and Sustainable Development

In 2008, governments in Europe and the Caribbean signed an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), marking a shift from preferential trade to “reciprocal” trade liberalization. The EPA promised to improve economic growth, fight poverty, and promote sustainable development. Since then, it is widely recognized to have fallen well short of its goals. These failures, the authors contend, have not sparked a rethinking but instead have provided constitutive gaps for trade experts to act upon, scapegoating Caribbean states for the EPA’s shortcomings (many of which were recognized before the agreement was signed) while developing new strategies aimed at its elusive goals. The EPA’s weak impact has been paralleled by tens of millions of euros spent to make it “work,” demonstrating the power of disavowal in trade fantasies; the failings of the EPA to increase trade has only intensified the drive to create initiatives aimed at revealing its ability to do so, through stakeholder forums, capacity building, technical training, and “awareness-raising.” Although pitched (outwardly) as a mechanism for increased trade, the authors argue the EPA’s (unconscious) function has been the opposite: to recast poor economic outcomes and stagnant trade as actually being about improved trade, growth, and sustainability.