The Caribbean Is Being Forced to Reconsider Its Trade Dependence on the United States

By Ronald Sanders

The Caribbean has not chosen to loosen its trade dependence on the United States. It is being driven to do so.

For generations, Caribbean importers and consumers have looked first to the American market – and for good reason. The United States is close. Shipping lanes are well-established. Delivery is faster, refrigerated cargo and container services are purpose-built to support the trade, and commercial relationships run deep.

For food, medicine, household goods, machinery and construction materials, America has long been the region’s natural first port of call.

That loyalty has paid dividends for the United States as well. Washington has for many years enjoyed a significant trade surplus with Caribbean nations, a dynamic that holds even accounting for the more recent rise of oil and gas exports from Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago.

The arrangement, in short, has worked well for both sides – which is precisely what makes the current moment so consequential.

No sensible Caribbean government wishes to weaken ties with the country that has long anchored its commerce. Yet the cumulative weight of recent U.S. trade policy is now forcing governments, businesses and consumers across the region to reexamine assumptions that once seemed beyond question.

Three distinct pressures are driving that shift.

The Tariff Burden Falls Hardest on Small Economies

The first pressure is the continuing cost imposed on Caribbean exports entering the United States. Although the sweeping tariff measures announced by Washington on April 2, 2025 were subsequently narrowed after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the emergency-based approach, the consequences remain serious for many Caribbean producers.

As of April 2026, most Caribbean goods still face a 10 percent baseline import duty under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974.

From the vantage point of a large, diversified economy, 10 percent may seem unremarkable. For small island states exporting rum, processed foods, specialty preparations, personal care products, building materials and other niche goods – industries where profitability depends on razor-thin margins – it is anything but. Competitiveness, once lost at the margin, is rarely recovered quickly.

Higher American Prices Become Caribbean Problems

The second pressure is broader, and in many respects more corrosive. The tariffs Washington has levied on imports from much of the rest of the world do not stay neatly within American borders.

They feed into U.S. prices – for food, manufactured goods, agricultural inputs and industrial products – and those price increases travel. Since the Caribbean still sources a substantial share of its essential supplies from the United States or through American-linked supply chains, inflation in America quickly becomes inflation in Kingston, Bridgetown and Port of Spain.

The consequences are already pressing heavily on countries that can least afford sustained imported inflation. Caribbean wages cannot indefinitely absorb rising prices for basic necessities.

Governments do not trade directly, but they cannot escape the fiscal and political fallout when households are squeezed by rising costs for food, medicine and construction supplies. At that point, food security and health security cease to be abstract future concerns. They become immediate national ones.

The Cost of Doing Business Has Risen Beyond the Price of Goods

The third pressure is more practical, but no less significant. Caribbean business travelers have long journeyed to the United States to inspect goods, meet suppliers, attend trade fairs and maintain the commercial relationships that sustain cross-border trade.

Where visa requirements become more onerous – and where high bond requirements, already imposed in some cases, threaten to become more widespread – the cost of doing business with the United States rises once again. The burden falls not only on the price of goods themselves, but on the time, expense and uncertainty of simply accessing the market from which those goods are purchased.

Alternatives Are Already Coming Into View

Taken together, these three pressures are pushing Caribbean governments, importers and consumers to look more seriously at alternative suppliers. They are not doing so out of hostility to the United States, nor from any desire to sever longstanding commercial ties. They are doing so because prudence demands it.

That process has already begun in earnest. CARICOM member states are intensifying efforts to source more goods within the region and to broaden relationships with international partners beyond North America.

The call to buy local and buy regional within the CARICOM Single Market and Economy is gaining practical traction rather than remaining a polite aspiration. The Caribbean is hardly alone in this recalculation: Canada, for instance, is moving toward a free trade agreement with Mercosur precisely because it now considers dependence on an uncertain U.S. trade environment to carry unacceptable risk.

The strategic implications for the United States deserve serious attention. The Caribbean is a friendly, proximate and reliable market – the kind that major economies generally work hard to cultivate and retain.

If U.S. policy continues to push Caribbean importers toward sourcing food, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods and building materials from Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe, Washington stands to lose not merely export revenues, but market presence and commercial influence in a region that has historically deferred to it first.

This Is Not Grievance – It Is Geography and Arithmetic

This is not an argument rooted in resentment. It is an argument rooted in realism. Caribbean nations are not diversifying their trade relationships because they wish to turn their backs on the United States. They are being compelled to do so by circumstances that increasingly threaten economic stability at home – and, with it, the social and political stability that responsible governments exist to protect.

No credible administration can ignore persistently rising prices for essential goods, deepening uncertainty in supply chains, and mounting transactional costs in a market on which the region has long depended. When those conditions persist, diversification does not require a policy decision. It becomes an organic response to necessity.

If the current imbalance is not addressed, that diversification will accelerate – not as an act of political realignment, but as a straightforward matter of economic survival. The United States would then face a disquieting outcome: the quiet loss of a loyal market that had no wish to go elsewhere, but was ultimately left with no practical alternative.

That would be an unfortunate result for the Caribbean. For the United States, it would simply be an unnecessary one.

Ronald Sanders is Antigua & Barbuda’s Ambassador to the US and the OAS, and the Chancellor of The University of Guyana