Ryan Ba­choo

Ex­perts across the re­gion have urged Caribbean re­silience in re­sponse to U.S. pol­i­cy shift.

This was at a UWI Vice-Chan­cel­lor’s Fo­rum held last Tues­day where Caribbean lead­ers, diplo­mats, and schol­ars gath­ered vir­tu­al­ly to dis­cuss U.S. Pres­i­dent, Don­ald Trump's great pol­i­cy shift and the Caribbean's re­sponse to it.

In his re­marks, Pro Vice-Chan­cel­lor Pro­fes­sor Justin Robin­son em­pha­sised the Caribbean's his­tor­i­cal agili­ty in nav­i­gat­ing glob­al shifts.

"We've had to dance with colo­nial rulers, tan­go with eco­nom­ic down­turns, and now we must learn a new two-step with poli­cies that may af­fect every­thing from trade to se­cu­ri­ty," he stat­ed. Robin­son urged pan­el­lists to en­gage in proac­tive di­a­logue fo­cused on build­ing re­silience and se­cur­ing the best out­comes for Caribbean na­tions.

Jef­frey Sachs, an econ­o­mist at Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­sit, de­scribed Pres­i­dent Trump's ap­proach and the cur­rent changes in Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy as a form of "neo-im­pe­ri­al­ism" root­ed in a vi­sion for U.S. dom­i­nance in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. "We are in a very un­sta­ble pe­ri­od," he not­ed. 

He cau­tioned that this in­sta­bil­i­ty presents chal­lenges for the Caribbean, dri­ven by Trump's an­ti-mi­grant sen­ti­ments and pro­tec­tion­ist trade poli­cies. Sachs em­pha­sised the need for uni­ty among Caribbean na­tions through CARI­COM and sug­gest­ed that CELAC could en­hance re­gion­al diplo­ma­cy.

He high­light­ed Mex­i­co, un­der Clau­dia Shein­baum, as a po­ten­tial key play­er in fos­ter­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Caribbean to ad­dress these com­plex­i­ties.