Prime Min­is­ter of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Gas­ton Browne, is­sued a state­ment to­day re­spond­ing to re­marks by Trinidad and To­ba­go Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­cern­ing CARI­COM and in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions. Prime Min­is­ter Browne said An­tigua and Bar­bu­da re­spects the sov­er­eign right of CARI­COM mem­bers to con­duct bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions but ex­pects the same re­spect for its own en­gage­ments with the Unit­ed States.

Prime Min­is­ter Browne ad­dressed as­ser­tions that CARI­COM is an un­re­li­able part­ner. He cit­ed trade da­ta from 2024 show­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go earned more than $1.1 bil­lion in for­eign ex­change from the re­gion. Ac­cord­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Browne, Trinidad and To­ba­go main­tains the on­ly net pos­i­tive trade bal­ance in the Com­mu­ni­ty. He not­ed that CARI­COM states for­went $142.7 mil­lion in cus­toms rev­enue in 2024 to sup­port Trinidad and To­ba­go man­u­fac­tur­ing through the Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff.

Re­gard­ing re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty, Prime Min­is­ter Browne stat­ed that CARI­COM se­cu­ri­ty mech­a­nisms and in­tel­li­gence shar­ing re­main es­sen­tial pil­lars for ad­dress­ing crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go. He em­pha­sized that An­tigua and Bar­bu­da sup­ports these col­lec­tive ef­forts.

Prime Min­is­ter Browne re­ject­ed claims that An­tigua and Bar­bu­da lead­ers spoke neg­a­tive­ly about the Unit­ed States. He stat­ed no ev­i­dence ex­ists for the as­ser­tion and cit­ed on­go­ing co­op­er­a­tion on se­cu­ri­ty, im­mi­gra­tion, and mul­ti­lat­er­al mat­ters. Prime Min­is­ter Browne con­clud­ed that re­gion­al con­sul­ta­tion is not dis­loy­al­ty and that in­ter­de­pen­dence re­mains valu­able to the Caribbean.