Samp­son Nan­ton

Deputy Man­ag­ing Ed­i­tor

The set­ting was the Hol­i­day Inn (now called Crowne Plaza) in Port-of-Spain; the year was 1984; and the oc­ca­sion was sup­posed to be a straight­for­ward cor­po­rate cel­e­bra­tion, the award­ing of a pres­ti­gious fran­chise to lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­er Mi­co Gar­ment Fac­to­ry to pro­duce British-de­signed Van Heusen shirts and slacks.

In­stead, it be­came the stag­ing ground for one of the most ag­gres­sive pro­tec­tion­ist trade moves in mod­ern Caribbean his­to­ry.

De­part­ing from his pre­pared re­marks, then Min­is­ter of In­dus­try and Com­merce Desmond Cartey stepped to the mi­cro­phone and de­liv­ered a bomb­shell to the un­sus­pect­ing au­di­ence: ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly, the im­por­ta­tion of shirts and tow­els in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go was com­plete­ly banned.

“To­day I have is­sued an or­der to the ef­fect that no more li­cences will be giv­en for the im­por­ta­tion of tow­els in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Cartey de­clared to a stunned room, which quick­ly erupt­ed in­to loud ap­plause.

It was a dra­mat­ic mo­ment, but for those read­ing the eco­nom­ic tea leaves in 1984, the writ­ing had al­ready been on the wall.

The oil boom that had car­ried the twin-is­land re­pub­lic through the 1970s was over. Glob­al oil prices were in freefall, the petrodol­lars that had fu­elled an era of ram­pant con­sumerism were dry­ing up, and the harsh re­al­i­ty of eco­nom­ic sur­vival was set­ting in.

The Cari­com Trade War

The 1984 ban was not mere­ly an iso­lat­ed eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy; it was a loud and force­ful shot across the bow of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Cari­com neigh­bours.

At the time, T&T was grap­pling with a mas­sive trade im­bal­ance. While the lo­cal mar­ket was flood­ed with cheap­er goods from oth­er Caribbean na­tions, Trinida­di­an man­u­fac­tur­ers found them­selves locked out of re­gion­al mar­kets, suf­fo­cat­ing un­der what the Gov­ern­ment viewed as un­fair trade prac­tices.

Fresh from a con­tentious Cari­com Coun­cil of Min­is­ters meet­ing in An­tigua, Cartey used the Hol­i­day Inn podi­um to draw a line in the sand. He is­sued a stern warn­ing to the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of East­ern Caribbean States (OECS) to re­view their stance to­wards Port-of-Spain.

“As long as we con­tin­ue to suf­fer from the lack of eq­ui­table reci­procity in our trade re­la­tions, our li­cens­ing regime will re­main,” Cartey warned.

To il­lus­trate the dire state of the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, the Min­is­ter point­ed to a grim sta­tis­tic: one lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­er was sit­ting on a stag­ger­ing stock­pile of 18,000 tow­els, com­plete­ly un­able to move them in a mar­ket over­sat­u­rat­ed by for­eign im­ports.

If the Gov­ern­ment did not in­ter­vene to pro­tect lo­cal in­dus­tries, Cartey warned, the con­se­quences for the do­mes­tic econ­o­my would be “dis­as­trous.”

Fight­ing the

“Suit­case Trade”

The Gov­ern­ment’s bat­tle was not on­ly against re­gion­al fac­to­ries; it was al­so against its own cit­i­zens.

The 1980s saw the ex­plo­sion of the in­fa­mous “suit­case trade”.

Armed with for­eign ex­change, Trinida­di­ans were reg­u­lar­ly trav­el­ling to re­gion­al and ex­tra-re­gion­al hubs, re­turn­ing with over­stuffed lug­gage filled with cheap gar­ments to sell from their homes and car trunks.

This in­for­mal econ­o­my was se­vere­ly un­der­cut­ting the lo­cal gar­ment in­dus­try, which the State had spent years try­ing to de­vel­op through the In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (IDC).

Cartey praised com­pa­nies such as Mi­co Gar­ment Fac­to­ry for fight­ing back the right way: by rais­ing their stan­dards.

Earn­ing the con­fi­dence of a British par­ent firm to man­u­fac­ture Van Heusen lo­cal­ly was proof, he not­ed, that Trinida­di­an man­u­fac­tur­ers could com­pete glob­al­ly when they ap­plied “dint of hard work and dili­gence”.

In re­sponse to the suit­case traders, the Min­istry of Fi­nance and Plan­ning had al­ready in­struct­ed Cus­toms and Ex­cise to ag­gres­sive­ly mon­i­tor and clamp down on com­mer­cial goods en­ter­ing through pas­sen­ger lug­gage.

The com­plete ban on com­mer­cial im­port li­cences for shirts and tow­els rep­re­sent­ed the ul­ti­mate es­ca­la­tion of this pol­i­cy.

“We Must Ex­port”

Look­ing back, Cartey’s speech at the Hol­i­day Inn reads al­most like an eco­nom­ic prophe­cy for Trinidad and To­ba­go, a des­per­ate plea for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion that re­mains rel­e­vant decades lat­er.

As the ap­plause died down, the Min­is­ter sober­ly re­mind­ed the room of the harsh new re­al­i­ty fac­ing the na­tion. The days of re­ly­ing sole­ly on pe­tro­le­um rev­enues to fund an im­port-heavy lifestyle were of­fi­cial­ly over.

“In re­cent times, it is be­ing brought home to us dai­ly, by what we read, see, and hear con­stant­ly, that as a re­sult of the fall in oil prices, many changes have oc­curred in our pat­tern of liv­ing,” Cartey con­clud­ed.

“If we are to sur­vive eco­nom­i­cal­ly, our man­u­fac­tur­ers, among oth­ers, must start think­ing se­ri­ous­ly about di­ver­si­fy­ing their ac­tiv­i­ties and seek­ing new mar­kets for their prod­ucts.”

His fi­nal words that night laid out the man­date not just for the gar­ment in­dus­try, but for the en­tire na­tion in the post-boom era:

“In short, we must ex­port.”

The Oil Boom Ends, the Ex­port Era Be­gins

While Cartey’s strict pro­tec­tion­ist wall built that night stood for sev­er­al years, it could not hold back the tide of glob­al­i­sa­tion that even­tu­al­ly swept across T&T.

By the late 1980s and ear­ly 1990s, the deep­en­ing eco­nom­ic re­ces­sion forced the coun­try in­to struc­tur­al ad­just­ment pro­grammes over­seen by the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF).

As a con­di­tion of eco­nom­ic re­struc­tur­ing, the in­fa­mous “Neg­a­tive List” and heavy im­port li­cens­ing regimes were grad­u­al­ly dis­man­tled in favour of trade lib­er­al­i­sa­tion.

Fur­ther­more, as the re­gion moved to­wards the cre­ation of the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME), Port-of-Spain had to re­open its ports to re­gion­al goods.

The ar­ti­fi­cial shield pro­tect­ing the lo­cal gar­ment sec­tor was low­ered, and like many coun­tries, T&T’s cloth­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers ul­ti­mate­ly strug­gled to sur­vive the sub­se­quent glob­al flood of cheap fast fash­ion.

How­ev­er, the shock ther­a­py of the 1984 ban left an in­deli­ble mark on the na­tion’s eco­nom­ic DNA.

Cartey’s man­date to “ex­port or die” forced a fun­da­men­tal shift in lo­cal busi­ness cul­ture.

The man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor used that cru­cial in­cu­ba­tion pe­ri­od in the 1980s to build ca­pac­i­ty, mod­ernise op­er­a­tions and ag­gres­sive­ly tar­get over­seas mar­kets.

While shirts and tow­els fad­ed from the fore­front, oth­er sec­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly food and bev­er­age, pack­ag­ing, and light in­dus­tri­al goods, em­braced the ex­port man­date.

To­day, T&T stands as the undis­put­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing pow­er­house of Cari­com.

The bit­ter trade im­bal­ance that so deeply frus­trat­ed Min­is­ter Cartey in 1984 has long since flipped in Port-of-Spain’s favour, a last­ing lega­cy of a des­per­ate era when lo­cal in­dus­tries were forced to stop re­ly­ing sole­ly on lo­cal shop­pers and take on the world.