CARICOM Wants Urgent Talks With US to Deal With Impact of New Trade Regime

GEORGETOWN, Guyana - Caribbean Community (CARICOM) chair, Prime Minister Mia Mottley says there is a need to “urgently” re-engage the United States directly as the region comes to grips with the impact of the global crises and in particular Washington’s new trade regime.

Barbados Prime Minister and CARICOM chair, Mia Mottley.In a lengthy statement released here, Mottley, who is also the Barbados Prime Minister said that the engagement with the United States must be “at the highest possible level,” adding “there is an obvious truth which has to be confronted by both sides.

“That truth is that these small and microstates of the Caribbean do not, in any way or in any sector, enjoy a greater degree of financial benefit in the balance of trade than does the United States.

“In fact, it is because of our small size, our great vulnerability, our limited manufacturing capacity, our inability to distort trade in any way, that successive United States administrations, included, and most recently, the Reagan administration in the early 1980s went to great lengths to assist us in promoting our abilities to sell in the United States under the Caribbean Basin Initiative.”

Caribbean countries have this week been sizing up the magnitude of the sweeping tariffs announced by United States President Donald Trump on their respective economies.

Trump on Wednesday announced far-reaching new tariffs on nearly all S trading partners ranging from a 34 per cent tax on imports from China and 20 per cent on the European Union, among others, in a move economists and other traders say is designed to dismantle much of the architecture of the global economy and trigger broader trade wars.

In the  case of  the Caribbean, Trump announced a 10 per cent tariff on most regional countries, while in the case of Guyana,  the tariff is as high, as 38 per cent.

Trump said that the tariffs were designed to boost domestic manufacturing, used aggressive rhetoric to describe a global trade system that the United States helped to build after World War II, saying “our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered” by other nations.

Mottley said that while the Caribbean will have to “see how these tariffs will impact” the existing trade relationship with Washington “that spirit of cooperation largely enabled security, social stability and economic growth on America’s third border in the Caribbean, or as we have agreed as recently in our meeting with Secretary of State Rubio, what is now our collective neighborhood”.

She urged Caribbean countries not to “fight among each other for political gain,” reminding them of the old adage  that goes “United, we stand and divided, we fall.”

Mottley said in dealing with the new US policy, the region must redouble its efforts to invest in Caribbean agricultural production and light manufacturing.

“The 25 by 2025 initiative, ably led by President Ali, seems too modest a target now, given all that we are confronting. We must grow our own and produce our own as much as possible. We can all make the decision to buy healthy foods at the market instead of processed foods at the supermarket.”

In her statement, Mottley called on the Caribbean to build ties with Africa, Central and Latin America, “and renew those ties with some of our older partners around the world, in the United Kingdom and Europe, and in Canada.

“We must not rely solely on one or two markets. We need to be able to sell our Caribbean goods to a wider, more stable global market,”  she said, adding that  in every global political and economic crisis, there is always an opportunity.

“If we come together, put any divisions aside, support our small businesses and small producers, we will come out of this stronger.

”To our hoteliers, our supermarkets and our people, my message is the same. Buy local and buy regional. I repeat, buy local and buy regional. The products are better, fresher and more competitive in many instances. If we work together and strengthen our own, we can ride through this crisis. We may have to confront issues of logistics and movement of goods, but we can do that too.

”To the United States, I say this simply. We are not your enemy. We are your friends. So many people in the Caribbean region have brothers and sisters, aunties, uncles, grandmothers, grandfathers, sons and daughters, God children living up in Miami or Queens or Brooklyn or New Jersey, Connecticut, Virginia, wherever. We welcome your people to our shores and give them the holidays, and for many of them, the experiences of a lifetime.”

Mottley said she had a simple message for President Trump and that is “our economies are not doing your economy any harm in any way."

“They are too small to have any negative or distorted impact on your country. So, I ask you to consider your decades-long friendship between your country and ours. And look to the Caribbean, recognizing that the family ties, yes, are strong. Let us talk, I hope, and let us work together to keep prices down for all of our people.”

Mottley said that while there is trouble in the Caribbean waters, “the responsibility each and every day for much of what we do and what much of what we grow must be ours, if we take care of each other, if we support each other, if we uplift each other, and if we tap into the strength and innovation of our common Caribbean spirit, we will see this through”.

She said that the world is in crisis and these are among the most challenging of times for the Caribbean region since the independence.

“Indeed, it is the most difficult period our world has faced since the end of World War II, 80 years ago. Our planet faces a climate catastrophe that worsens every year. We have a cost-of-living crisis that has been bedeviling us since the disruption of supply chains, when the COVID-19 Pandemic triggered the shutdown of the majority of countries.”

Mottley said misinformation, disinformation and manipulation are relevant and that the mental health crisis is causing hopelessness among many of  young people, and regrettably, crime and fear of crime are on the rise.

“We’re fighting wars in the Holy Land, in Europe and in Africa. Countries are distrustful of countries and neighbors are distrustful of neighbors. The international order, the international system, my friends, is in great danger of collapse, and now we are on the precipice of a global trade war.

”Our Caribbean economies are largely reliant on imports. Just go to the supermarket or visit the mall or the hardware shop or the electronic store, and you will see that most of the things there are not produced in this region.”

She said many of those commodities are either purchased directly from the United States or passed through the North American country on their way to the Caribbean region.

“That, my friends, is a legacy of our colonial dependence. Together with colleague Heads of State and Heads of Government, we have been working to diversify ourselves away from this dependence.

”We’ve already started to reap some successes, especially in the field of agriculture, for example, but we still have a long way to go. As we do this work, we have to be mindful that those recent announcements that have been made in the last few days will impact us very directly as a region and as a Caribbean people.”

Mottley said that the region must continue to work to become more self-sufficient, adding that “this trade war and the possibility of a one million US dollar to $1.5 million levy on all Chinese made ships entering US harbors will mean higher prices for the entire population of the region.

“A lot of Caribbean people will think that these things that you are seeing on television news or reading about are far away and “They don’t impact on me.” A lot of people think “I’m just a farmer”, “I’m just a schoolteacher”, or “I’m just a mechanic.” They say, “I live in Saint Lucy in Barbados”, or “I live in Portmore in Jamaica”, or Kingstown in St Vincent, or Arima in Trinidad or Basseterre in St Kitts & Nevis, or San Ignacio in Belize.

“These problems are far away from me, and they don’t impact me.” That is what you will hear them say. But the reality, my friends, is that if you buy food, if you buy electronics, if you buy clothes, it will impact you. It will impact each of us.

”My brothers and sisters, our Caribbean economies are not very large. So, we are, and have always been, at the whims of global prices. If Europe and China and the US  and Canada and Mexico are all putting tariffs on each other, that is going to disrupt supply chains, that is going to raise the cost of producing everything, from the food you eat, to the clothes on your back, to the phone in your pocket, to the car you drive down the road, to the spare parts that you need for critical infrastructure.

“That means higher prices for all of us to pay, and sadly, yes, this will impact all of us, regardless of what any of our Caribbean governments will do.

”We could lower our tariffs to zero in CARICOM, and it will not make a lick of difference, because our economies are small and vulnerable. This crisis, my friends, will impact not only goods, but it may also have a large spillover effect on tourism.”

Mottley said she is suggesting that the region takes steps to sustain the tourism industry as likely worsening conditions and “many of our source markets will have negative impacts on people’s ability to travel.

“We call on our regional private sector and the tourism sector to come together and to work with governments to collaborate for an immediate tourism strategy to ensure that we maintain market share numbers as a region.

”My friends, I pray that I’m wrong, and I’m praying that cooler heads prevail across the world, and leaders come together in a new sense of cooperation, to look after the poor and the vulnerable people of this world, and to leave space for the middle classes to chart their lives, to allow businesses to be able to get on with what they do and to trade,” Mottley sad.

CMC/pr/ir/2025