Trade and Development - the Caribbean Perspective

  Introduction Caribbean news was recently abuzz with Barbados’ plan to remove the Queen as its Head of State, which would signal a severing of some of the last vestiges of its legislative colonial ties. In the aftermath of that announcement, some of the media in the Global North pounced on China as the instigator of this change, suggesting thereby that our own Caribbean leaders could not themselves be credited with such a move. As a budding trade professional, my thoughts pivoted to the underlying recognition of the importance of strategic relations, in particular, in matters of trade.   The result is this Shridath Ramphal Centre (SRC) Trading Thoughts which provides a snapshot of the Caribbean’s main trading relations, chronicles developments with some of their trade partners arising from COVID-19 and finally proposes recommendations for future trading relations and strategies. Brief Snapshot of Caribbean Trade A country or region’s trade profile is inherently embedd...

  Barbados is being blacklisted by the European Union (EU). As one publication puts it, Barbados failed to implement changes to its tax exchange framework over the required period of 2015 to 2018. The changes were instead implemented by December 2019, too late to avoid a rating of "partially compliant" by the Organisation for the Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The EU subsequently added Barbados to its blacklist. There has been many public discussions since these development but what does any of this mean? If you are interested, stick around for a breakdown of the different components of this development. What is the OECD's role in this process and what is the significance of their rating? The OECD is an intergovernmental organisation with objectives such as facilitating global economic progress and trade. One route through which this is done is via setting standards to manage international tax evasion, of interest to this concept of blacklisting. The OECD c...