OPINION: U.S.-CARICOM Relations: Year in Review (2025)

Last Updated on Thursday, 1 January 2026, 14:41 by Writer

By Dr. Nand C. Bardouille

As the then-outgoing Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Chair’s end-of-year message made clear, “[t]his year [i.e. 2025], CARICOM made meaningful progress in advancing regional integration and economic growth.”

But despite this progress, nearly a year into Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. President, harsh foreign policy realities have set in. This became apparent in the early months of Trump 2.0, which engendered uncertainty regarding U.S. relations with virtually all of the bloc’s 14 sovereign member states.

Apart from that development, and in the time since, Trinidad and Tobago has grabbed the headlines vis-à-vis U.S.-CARICOM relations.

There is, to be sure, a major shift underway regarding Trinidad and Tobago’s relations with the U.S., dealing a blow to this regional grouping’s unity in recent months.

In the face of prevailing Trump 2.0 foreign policy dynamics, within which the U.S. military’s recent surge into the Caribbean looms large, Trinidad and Tobago is not the only CARICOM member state to reconsider its associated foreign policy positioning.

Offering an account that draws on my international relations disciplinary background, I address this shift in what to date is a series of five published articles.

Listed below (in reverse chronological order), they assess that the shift in question constitutes a significant test for the bloc’s unity in respect of Trump 2.0:

1. ‘The Price of CARICOM Countries’ Competing Foreign Policy Dispositions’. Dominica News Online (December 30, 2025).
2. ‘A Breach within CARICOM Widens’. Trinidad and Tobago Guardian (December 26 & 27, 2025 – Parts I & II).
3. ‘Trump’s Venezuelan Gambit Triggers Fears of Caribbean Costs’. Trinidad and Tobago Guardian (December 18, 2025).
4. ‘As Trump 2.0 Takes Root, CARICOM Faces Foreign Policy Quandary’. Trinidad and Tobago Guardian (December 11, 2025).
5. ‘The Perils of the Trump-Maduro Showdown for CARICOM’. Trinidad and Tobago Guardian (November 20, 2025).

Not for the first time in their post-independence history, CARICOM member states are mired in a foreign policy-related trajectory in which national and regional interests are pulling in opposite directions.

The above listed articles call attention to this challenge, which stacks on to early foreign policy setbacks that CARICOM member states began to grapple with just months into Trump’s second term in office.

In the foreign policy realm, then, this is the second of two principal Washington-facing stories that shaped CARICOM in 2025.

In the following published analyses, authored early in 2025, I examine that angle:

• ‘A Moment of Uncertainty for US-CARICOM Relations’. Trinidad and Tobago Guardian (May 15, 2025).
• ‘U.S., Caribbean Countries Seize the Foreign Policy Moment’. UNU-CRIS Insight Brief – 05, 2025.
• ‘Trump 2.0 and the Caribbean’. Global Americans Commentary (February 7, 2025).

How CARICOM responded in 2025 to Trump 2.0, which has unsettled the bloc, also links to today’s great-power politics.

In my published article titled ‘Today’s Great-power Politics and the Caribbean’ [Trinidad and Tobago Guardian July 24, 2025], I assess that this macro- or system-level variable is “turning up the international spotlight on and closing ranks for the geopolitics of spheres of influence, whose imprint is conspicuous in historically significant periods.”

Having regard to the foregoing developments, 2026 will be an especially important year for the unity of the CARICOM bloc.

The expectation is that regional leaders will put the conditions in place for a potential turning point in intra-CARICOM relations, prioritizing cooperation over confrontation.

The Fiftieth Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM, scheduled to take place in St. Kitts and Nevis from 24 to 27 February 2026, will be crucial to setting the tone in that regard.

The new year message of Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis Terrance Drew — in his capacity as Incoming Chairman of CARICOM — has not gone unnoticed by a cross-section of stakeholders, who have hailed its underlying call for “reflection, calm leadership, and renewed commitment to the Caribbean ideal.”

This narrative suggests that Drew is laying the foundations to leverage his chairmanship of the upcoming CARICOM summit to reset intra-CARICOM relations for the better.

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Nand C. Bardouille, Ph.D., is the manager of The Diplomatic Academy of the Caribbean in the Institute of International Relations at The University of the West Indies (The UWI) St. Augustine Campus, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of The UWI.