The rise and fall of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment: ‘open strategic autonomy’ in action

(Open) strategic autonomy (OSA) has quickly become the dominant concept in European Union (EU) trade policy strategy. This article aims to better understand how the concept plays out in policy practice by focusing on its discursive use in the rise and fall of the EU-China Comprehensive Investment Agreement (CAI). We start from the assumption that OSA as an 'empty signifier' is sufficiently malleable to account for diverging interpretations. Building on existing literature, we then construct an analytical framework that distinguishes between trade policy paradigms. Subsequently, we utilize Fairclough & Fairclough's 'scheme of practical argument' to analyze how the three signifiers of OSA – openness, sustainability and assertiveness – are connected in EU trade policy debates for or against CAI between May 2020 and September 2021. Our findings reveal that the concept of OSA can be utilized in both economics and foreign policy oriented arguments. While the Trade instead of Foreign Policy' (TiFP) paradigm was initially co-opted by the neoliberal paradigm, the Trade steered by Foreign Policy (TsFP) paradigm became gradually more dominant. These findings also contribute to explaining, respectively, the rise and fall of the CAI.