Cari­com lead­ers are hop­ing to have a meet­ing with US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to dis­cuss the pos­si­ble im­pact of his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s poli­cies on the re­gion.

Re­veal­ing to Guardian Me­dia what were some of the mat­ters dis­cussed at the cau­cus lev­el of Cari­com lead­ers at the 48th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Cari­com Heads which came to an end yes­ter­day, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da PM Gas­ton Browne said, “We looked at the geopo­lit­i­cal is­sues and the changes in the Unit­ed States and we are hop­ing to en­gage se­nior mem­bers of the US ad­min­is­tra­tion as soon as prac­ti­ca­ble. We are hop­ing that will be suc­cess­ful to invit­ing Pres­i­dent Trump to the re­gion.”

PM Browne added, “I think it is very im­por­tant for him to pay some at­ten­tion to the third bor­der of the US and al­so for him to en­ter mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions as to how US poli­cies will im­pact the re­gion, es­pe­cial­ly the small­er coun­tries.”

The An­tigua and Bar­bu­da PM said many Caribbean coun­tries have open economies and heav­i­ly im­port goods from the US.

“So, if the tar­iffs that the US in­tends to ply re­sults in an in­crease in prices in US dol­lars then clear­ly, we will have a se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion with im­port­ed in­fla­tion.”

Browne said the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) has writ­ten to Cari­com ad­vis­ing there will be a $56 mil­lion gap in fund­ing as a re­sult of the US re­duc­ing its sup­port to the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO).

“Even in terms of oth­er as­sis­tance from US­Aid, there is a gap now of about $56 mil­lion. That it­self not on­ly rep­re­sents a threat for the Caribbean but the US. COVID would have taught us that no one is safe un­til all of us are safe.”

Browne said con­tact with Trump would be made in­cre­men­tal­ly.

“We are hop­ing that we can en­gage per­haps ini­tial­ly at the lev­el of the US Sec­re­tary of State, Mar­co Ru­bio, and then with a sub­se­quent en­gage­ment with Pres­i­dent Trump as we seek to strength­en the re­la­tion­ship with the re­gion and the US.”

He said there is no spe­cif­ic time­line for ex­tend­ing this in­vi­ta­tion.

Mean­while, Ja­maica PM An­drew Hol­ness has al­ready been in con­tact with Ru­bio re­gard­ing his coun­try’s in­ter­ests. He told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, “We have not yet es­tab­lished a meet­ing, but we ex­pect that there would be one.”

Asked about Cari­com’s in­ten­tion to meet with Trump, Hol­ness said, “We don’t know as yet but hope­ful­ly there will be a meet­ing.”