Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali has voiced con­cern over US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s plan to im­pose tar­iffs on ships/ves­sels, made in Chi­na, say­ing this could im­pact trade in Guyana and the re­gion.

 In a state­ment on Sat­ur­day, Ali said Guyana, Suri­name, Trinidad and To­ba­go would need to as­sess the im­pli­ca­tions for tankers and oth­er ves­sels trans­port­ing oil and gas.

“That of course can have ef­fects on the cost of goods com­ing in­to the re­gion, the cost of trans­port com­ing in­to the re­gion,” Ali stat­ed.

“This is a pol­i­cy that was al­lud­ed to, so there are some dis­cus­sions that will have to oc­cur so all of these things are key re­gion­al is­sues that we are dis­cussing to­geth­er.”

Some of these chal­lenges were raised by the Re­gion­al Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion dur­ing a re­cent emer­gency vir­tu­al meet­ing held by CARI­COM heads.

“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.

He not­ed while the pol­i­cy is not yet im­ple­ment­ed, “we have to have ear­ly con­ver­sa­tions to mit­i­gate or min­i­mize the im­pact.”

Mean­while, US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio will em­bark on his first of­fi­cial vis­it to the Caribbean next week, with a tour of three na­tions, in­clud­ing Guyana, Ja­maica, and Suri­name. Ru­bio will meet with re­gion­al lead­ers to dis­cuss sev­er­al press­ing is­sues.

The vis­it will be­gin in Ja­maica, where Ru­bio is set to meet with Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness for talks. He will then trav­el to Guyana and Suri­name to en­gage with their re­spec­tive pres­i­dents, Pres­i­dents Ir­faan Ali and Chan­drikaper­sad San­tokhi.

Ru­bio’s trip fol­lows a re­gion­al sum­mit in Bar­ba­dos last month, where CARI­COM Chair­woman, Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley of Bar­ba­dos, ex­tend­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to vis­it the Caribbean.

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, Mar. 23, CMC –

CMC/gy/kb/2025