Akash Sama­roo

Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley has cred­it­ed U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump with un­in­ten­tion­al­ly push­ing Cari­com to strength­en its food se­cu­ri­ty part­ner­ships, fol­low­ing his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s threat to im­pose tar­iffs on Chi­nese-made ships.

Speak­ing on Sun­day night as the out­go­ing Chair at the open­ing of the 49th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment in Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica, Mot­t­ley said, “It is true that the ac­tions of the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment and their promise to im­pose tar­iffs on all Chi­nese-made ships cre­at­ed a cat­a­lyst for move­ment in a way that we could not find on our own. And if any­thing, we must thank Pres­i­dent Trump and the U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for that. Mer­ci­ful­ly, there was a stay of ex­e­cu­tion on the im­po­si­tion of that tar­iff a few months ago.”

She said the re­gion con­tin­ues to face ris­ing liv­ing costs that are mak­ing dai­ly life hard­er for Caribbean peo­ple.

“And the ques­tion for us as heads of gov­ern­ment and heads of state is how do we make it eas­i­er for peo­ple to sleep and how do we al­low them to be able to un­der­take that task of tak­ing care of them­selves and their fam­i­lies in the most eas­i­er ways in spite of what has been trig­gered glob­al­ly through geopo­lit­i­cal is­sues and wars and con­flict and dis­rup­tion sup­plies,” Mot­t­ley said.

She re­vealed that two weeks ago a Cari­com trade del­e­ga­tion vis­it­ed Boa Vista, Brazil, to de­vel­op trade links that will pro­vide ac­cess to cheap­er food and meat.

Mot­t­ley al­so thanked the Caribbean Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CP­SO) for part­ner­ing with re­gion­al lead­ers to ad­vance food se­cu­ri­ty goals.

“An amaz­ing 500 mem­bers of the pri­vate sec­tor went on to a Zoom call show­ing that when our vi­tal in­ter­ests are tru­ly chal­lenged, we know how to find uni­ty in this re­gion.”

Against that back­drop, she said, the Trump-era threat prompt­ed Cari­com to pur­sue new ways to feed it­self, though she warned that the work re­mains far from com­plete.

“If we can­not open up greater sup­ply routes, if we can in­crease our do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion, cog­nizant, how­ev­er, that we are con­stant­ly at risk of the cli­mate cri­sis, dec­i­mat­ing that which we are try­ing to do in terms of open field agri­cul­ture, then we can be­gin to rec­og­nize that we do have the ca­pac­i­ty to feed our­selves more. The bot­tom line is, how­ev­er, that there are still too many gaps.”

To ad­dress the re­gion’s lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges, Mot­t­ley said two Cari­com mem­ber states are in the process of ac­quir­ing car­go planes to im­prove the move­ment of goods across the bloc.

She al­so ex­pects the long-dis­cussed re­gion­al fer­ry ser­vice to be on the agen­da at this week’s meet­ing.

“Equal­ly, I an­tic­i­pate that at this meet­ing at Mon­tego Bay, we will have the pre­sen­ta­tion on the In­ter-Is­land Re­gion­al Fer­ry from the pri­vate sec­tor. And at this point, it is up to us to de­ter­mine whether we have the po­lit­i­cal will to fi­nal­ly en­sure that we can de­moc­ra­tise trav­el through ships.”

Mot­t­ley said the re­gion must re­duce its re­liance on air trans­port and make bet­ter use of its mar­itime re­sources.

“We have al­lowed our­selves to be­come pure­ly at the mer­cy of air trav­el with­out recog­nis­ing that as is­lands in the Caribbean Sea, we have the abil­i­ty to reach each oth­er in good time and at cheap­er fares than if we on­ly use air to con­nect our re­gion.”