Re­al­is­ti­cal­ly, the economies of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Caribbean can­not in the im­me­di­ate fu­ture live and pros­per with­out con­tin­u­ing re­liance on ex­ports in­to the Unit­ed States mar­ket. And while it may not be the same in dol­lars for the US if it were to lose the T&T and Eng­lish-Speak­ing Caribbean’s mar­kets for its goods and ser­vices, re­gion­al coun­tries not be­ing able to earn from their ex­ports to pay for US-made goods and ser­vices, be­cause of the tar­iff bar­ri­ers, will make the US an even more at­trac­tive des­ti­na­tion for im­mi­grants from the re­gion seek­ing eco­nom­ic refuge.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and his ad­vis­ers have to think be­yond forc­ing their tar­iff mea­sures on the re­gion as a means of ex­act­ing some form of re­venge; more so be­cause the US has a healthy bal­ance of trade sur­plus with the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean.

One re­port on trade be­tween the US and the re­gion states that in 2023, the US sur­plus in goods with the 14 in­de­pen­dent Cari­com na­tions was $7.4 bil­lion, and in 2024 it was $5.8 bil­lion. This means the US should re­al­ly have no con­test with the re­gion.

And while it is cer­tain that the US sur­plus­es in trade with the re­gion is not of the na­ture that will in any way cause con­cern in re­la­tion to Amer­i­ca’s over­all trade, if it were to lose the Caribbean mar­ket, it’s in the in­ter­est of the Unit­ed States that the re­gion does not slip in­to be­com­ing a bas­ket case be­cause of a who­lescale slide in­to an eco­nom­ic and pover­ty-rid­den re­gion in the Amer­i­can back­door.

Amer­i­ca’s south­ern bor­der leads di­rect­ly in­to and out of the Caribbean, to the point where the US will have to play host to hun­dreds of thou­sands of im­mi­grants who will seek des­per­ate shel­ter in the US from a Caribbean left strand­ed by the im­po­si­tion of in­creased tar­iffs.

The rea­son­ing is sim­ple but pow­er­ful: the Unit­ed States will be court­ing the re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty of an im­mi­grant ex­plo­sion on its Flori­da shores as peo­ple from the Caribbean seek a way out from a pover­ty-strick­en re­gion be­cause of tar­iff bar­ri­ers to its ex­port earn­ings from the US.

If such a sit­u­a­tion were to de­vel­op in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, short of eco­nom­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties be­cause of the clo­sure and or dra­mat­ic de­cline in the earn­ings of na­tions of the re­gion, drugs and arms deal­ers will ex­pand their ne­far­i­ous trade through the re­gion to the high-val­ue con­sump­tion mar­kets of the US.

Sure­ly, Pres­i­dent Trump, now fight­ing an im­mi­gra­tion war on the US bor­der with Latin Amer­i­ca, will not want to deal with il­le­gal im­mi­grants stream­ing in­to the US from Caribbean na­tions bad­ly af­fect­ed by his tar­iff wars, es­pe­cial­ly against coun­tries with which he has no re­al ba­sis to drag in­to his tar­iff war.

It is, there­fore, the mo­ment for deep Cari­com dis­cus­sions and plan­ning to make the above and oth­er points to the US through en­er­gised and in­formed di­a­logue with of­fi­cials in Wash­ing­ton.

Along­side such diplo­ma­cy, it is be­yond time that the re­gion aims to broad­en its trade with strate­gi­cal­ly im­por­tant re­gions and sub-re­gions of the world. We can­not re­main hog-tied to a one-di­men­sion­al in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tion­ship.