Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor–Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers will rep­re­sent Trinidad and To­ba­go at a high-lev­el meet­ing be­tween the Unit­ed States and Cari­com in Wash­ing­ton to­day. Re­gion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives are ex­pect­ed to meet US Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau to dis­cuss mat­ters of mu­tu­al in­ter­est.

The meet­ing, de­scribed as a Unit­ed States–Caribbean Di­a­logue, comes amid chang­ing US for­eign pol­i­cy to­wards the re­gion and ques­tions about how Caribbean gov­ern­ments man­age their re­la­tion­ships with ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.

Guardian Me­dia was un­able to reach Sobers for de­tails about Trinidad and To­ba­go’s par­tic­i­pa­tion and the Gov­ern­ment’s pri­or­i­ties for the dis­cus­sions.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the meet­ing is in­tend­ed to strength­en diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment be­tween Wash­ing­ton and Cari­com, while giv­ing re­gion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives an op­por­tu­ni­ty to raise con­cerns and iden­ti­fy ar­eas for greater co­op­er­a­tion. Ahead of to­day’s meet­ing, Guardian Me­dia ex­plored whether the Unit­ed States’ grow­ing fo­cus on its re­la­tion­ship with the Caribbean could af­fect the re­gion’s ex­ist­ing diplo­mat­ic and eco­nom­ic part­ner­ships, par­tic­u­lar­ly with Chi­na.

A source fa­mil­iar with Cari­com’s prepa­ra­tions said in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships were among the broad­er con­sid­er­a­tions sur­round­ing en­gage­ment with Wash­ing­ton. How­ev­er, there was no con­fir­ma­tion that the is­sue would be for­mal­ly ad­dressed at the meet­ing.

Caribbean coun­tries have tak­en dif­fer­ent ap­proach­es to de­vel­op­ment as­sis­tance and for­eign in­vest­ment. Some re­ly on grants and con­ces­sion­al fi­nanc­ing from in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to sup­port in­fra­struc­ture and oth­er de­vel­op­ment projects. Chi­na’s Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive is one arrange­ment through which coun­tries have sought de­vel­op­ment as­sis­tance. Diplo­mat­ic re­la­tion­ships al­so dif­fer across Cari­com, with some mem­ber states con­tin­u­ing to recog­nise Tai­wan. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands these dif­fer­ences are rel­e­vant to the broad­er ques­tion of how Caribbean gov­ern­ments bal­ance their in­di­vid­ual for­eign pol­i­cy pri­or­i­ties with ef­forts to strength­en co­op­er­a­tion with the Unit­ed States. How­ev­er, there is no in­di­ca­tion that Cari­com has adopt­ed a com­mon po­si­tion on those re­la­tion­ships ahead of the meet­ing.

There are al­so ques­tions about whether Caribbean gov­ern­ments will use the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­vis­it con­cerns aris­ing from pre­vi­ous US pol­i­cy po­si­tions, in­clud­ing Wash­ing­ton’s ap­proach to Cuban med­ical per­son­nel work­ing in the re­gion and arrange­ments in­volv­ing the ac­cep­tance of third-coun­try na­tion­als.

While the is­sues have been iden­ti­fied as rel­e­vant to the wider re­la­tion­ship be­tween Wash­ing­ton and the re­gion, Guardian Me­dia could not con­firm whether ei­ther would be in­clud­ed on to­day’s for­mal agen­da. The meet­ing is ex­pect­ed to take place at the US State De­part­ment.