Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne says his An­tigua and Bar­bu­da is con­cerned that moves by the Unit­ed States to im­pose a levy on Chi­nese-built ships that op­er­ate in US ports could have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on his coun­try’s econ­o­my.

The Unit­ed States Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive has pro­posed fines of up to US$1.5 mil­lion on Chi­na-made ships or ves­sels from fleets that in­clude ships made in Chi­na.

Browne, speak­ing on his week­ly ra­dio pro­gramme over the last week­end, said that the is­sue has been dis­cussed by cab­i­net over the past sev­er­al weeks amid con­cerns by min­is­ters that such a move will like­ly have a neg­a­tive im­pact on the econ­o­my.

“An analy­sis has been done and we have been ad­vised that ship­ping a con­tain­er could in­crease by about US$3,000 to US$4,000,” Browne told ra­dio lis­ten­ers.

“Now if that hap­pens, you are talk­ing about an in­crease in prices of be­tween eight and 10 per cent eas­i­ly, which would be ex­treme­ly in­fla­tion­ary at this time con­sid­er­ing that there is al­ready an el­e­vat­ed rate of in­fla­tion of about 4.5 per cent at the mo­ment. This means that in­fla­tion could trend to up to 12 or 14 per cent,” he added.

Last Sat­ur­day, Guyana’s  Pres­i­dent, Ir­faan Ali in a state­ment said that the is­sue was among mat­ters raised by the Re­gion­al Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion dur­ing a re­cent emer­gency vir­tu­al meet­ing held by CARI­COM lead­ers.

“The US is our part­ner, the re­gion recog­nis­es that the US is an im­por­tant part­ner and the Re­gion­al Pri­vate Sec­tor will be hav­ing some con­ver­sa­tions with the US. We will al­so be hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions with var­i­ous ac­tors in the US, Sec­re­tary of State for ex­am­ple and al­so the Chair of CARI­COM will be seek­ing to have a meet­ing with the White House to go through some of these chal­lenges that we may face and to have a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of each oth­er po­si­tions,” Ali said.

Browne said the move by Wash­ing­ton would be dev­as­tat­ing for the na­tion­al econ­o­my and for con­sumers gen­er­al­ly and that the cab­i­net has been dis­cussing a num­ber of op­tions of like­ly ac­tions should this mea­sure go in­to ef­fect.

He said that in ad­di­tion, dis­cus­sions are al­so tak­ing place at the lev­el of CARI­COM and Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos, Mia Mot­t­ley, the cur­rent chair of the 15-mem­ber re­gion­al group­ing, has been asked to write to the US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on be­half of CARI­COM to ex­plain the im­pact this move would have on the Caribbean as it would ‘lit­er­al­ly’ desta­bilise the re­gion.

“What we are ask­ing for is a ‘carve out’ un­der the Caribbean Basin Ini­tia­tive (CBI) as one of the ob­jec­tives of the CBI is to en­sure eco­nom­ic and so­cial sta­bil­i­ty with­in the re­gion. The Unit­ed States, ob­vi­ous­ly, should be con­cerned about its south­ern ‘third bor­der’ and to lessen any un­in­tend­ed con­se­quences of any poli­cies that it would im­ple­ment,” Browne said.

He said that while he does not want the re­gion to get in­volved in the “geopo­lit­i­cal spats” be­tween the US and Chi­na, how­ev­er,  where it af­fects the re­gion, Wash­ing­ton must be en­gaged and re­gion­al lead­ers are of the view that some favourable con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to CARI­COM states.

Caribbean lead­ers are due to meet with the US Sec­re­tary of State, Mar­co Ru­bio, in Ja­maica on Wednes­day.

ST. JOHN’S, An­tigua, Mar 24, CMC –  

CMC/ah/ir/2025