Most Caribbean Community (CARICOM) citizens are knee-deep or neck-high into the upcoming Easter holiday weekend mode and Saint Lucians are also getting ready for this year’s Jazz Festival in May, to be followed by this year’s Carnival and Calypso seasons.
Saint Lucia’s Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Economic Development, Youth Economy and National Security Philip J. Pierre, continues putting his final touches to next week’s 2025-2026 Budget presentations – and he’s sure to have considered how the rolling and sky-rocketing tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump will effectually affect Caribbean citizens.
However, the tariffs story might quicker make J’ouvert ‘Ole Mas’ themes and carnival portrayals than being understood by the average Saint Lucian or other regional Joe Blo or June Doe, who’s either not-yet interested, or believes it might all just blow away within the transactional US president’s 90-day postponement of their implementation.
Expectedly, many Caribbean Opposition parties will simply politicize the tariffs issue for partisan reasons – especially where general elections are on the horizon.
But Caribbean governments that have no cards to play have had to ‘take-in-front’, including Saint Lucia appointing a Cabinet committee to assess the challenges and start preparing for the worse — even while praying and hoping for the best.
Since August 2021, Saint Lucia’s Labour Party-led administration — led by an established accountant and including two Independent MPs and with access to two former prime ministers and ministers for finance — has been able to shield Saint Lucians from paying the real costs of food, cooking gas and fuel that followed the COVID pandemic, finding the millions to pay for subsidies that have kept prices low and affordable since 2021.
Having shown confidence in this administration’s handling of the economy, Saint Lucians will naturally expect it will continue finding ways to get the funds to keep blocking the holes bored in their pockets by the constantly-rising cost of living, felt deeper each time they go to the supermarket.
But it won’t be easy for Caribbean people to adjust to the effects of the US tariffs, as costs of everything imported that’s ‘Made in China’ or ‘Made in the USA’ (and basically everywhere else) will increase by whatever multiplied costs after importers and exporters ultimately pass their tariff trade costs to consumers.
Canada and Mexico have responded admirably, but only China has been able to tell President Trump where to jump off, planning (long in advance) for what he promised during the 2024 presidential campaign and from the experiences of his first presidency (2016-2020).
China has ‘tariff-proofed’ its economy and is now using the new Silk Road trade routes developed through its Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) to re-channel better business with all the countries being hammered and hampered by Trump’s tariffs.
President Xi Jinping this week used his first trip abroad since Trump’s Second Coming to assure neighbouring Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia they can rely on trusted and stable trade with Beijing.
But poor and developing nations and small island states everywhere have no choice but to get ready to absorb the terrible shocks that have already started globally – including in the US.
The veritable King Donald II has had to backtrack on China by removing smart phones, computers, TV screens and microchips from his original list of banned items, his backpedalling accelerated by the likely political backlashes from US consumers possibly having to pay more-than-double for an i-Phone manufactured in China by Apple.
Trump 2.0 was also forced to backtrack on imposing a million-dollar fine on any ship built in China calling at any American port, as Tropical Shipping and other lines serving the Caribbean from the US would have simply drowned.
The US president last week announced a calculated 90-day pause on tariff implementation that allowed his Wall Street supporters to invest in US bonds and work the Stock Market in their common interests if only to recover the billions they lost through the bad news he’d been rolling out.
Trump feels Americans must be willing to take — and also pay for — his prescribed medicines for the economic and other ills created by the cards he’s so far played in his tariff war against China.
But Caribbean nations have no trump cards to play — and it’s here that Caribbean leaders will have to find, not only the ways and means to respond to the inevitable, but also to prepare the nation for both the short-term and the long-run.
Voters hardly-ever like having to take or make precautionary or preventative measures or decisions to protect — or even prepare — for likely consequences, be they hurricanes, health epidemics or rising costs from increased taxes, whether from the private sector passing-on the costs, or the government adjusting tax rates to meet new and urgent needs and challenges.
While opposition parties will be busy playing the usual game of opposing for opposing sake, it’s the governments’ responsibility to remind all parties’ supporters they will all be consumed in the same Trump tariff soup, which will not taste different — to anyone — at the cash register.
PM Pierre has thus-far presented record budget estimates and appropriations bills that have led to successive years of growth and positive expectations for continuity.
But adjusting to the new tariff realities will surely impact the government’s economic performance in several ways and places.
This time around — and as per usual — the Saint Lucia PM can be expected to present assurances in the budget that his administration will continue ‘Putting People First’ until his party seeks a second term.
But no one should expect that tempering or recovery from the Trump tariffs will be like a holiday on any beach or a walk in a park.
Therefore, the earlier governments and ruling parties across the region can get going on sensitizing and preparing citizens for what’s coming in our version of the global effects of and hangovers from Trump’s tariff tantrums, the better for us all.