More foreign affairs in a crazy, mixed-up world
"Conning" Jamaica: Miniscule Marco playing hardball with Andrew Holness in a transparently political swap
Andrew Holness has been Jamaica’s telegenic youngest prime minister for nearly a decade, though the polls generally predict his reign could end by September, when he must call his next parliamentary election. Theoretically, he should be taking no chances.
But the road to reelection to a third term will not be easy. Hence the somewhat difficult difficult decision to risk closer identification with Donald Trump, not liked by most Jamaican voters, by welcoming U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to the island early on.
His Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) has already dodged one pesky question, announcing in late March that Jamaica will not—repeat, not—pursue a referendum on becoming a constitutional republic in 2025. Unlike Barbados, Dominica, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago—which have left the Commonwealth in recent years—Jamaica will postpone the step which would jettison King Charles as head of state, governing through a governor-general—and open the way to an elected president. [See “No time for poll,” March 27, https://www.caribbeanlife.com/no-time-for-poll/ .]
Former Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller once championed that break with 60 years of Jamaican tradition, losing her post to Holness in 2016 after a very close election: 32 to 31 seats, the most even split in the young country’s history. (Obviously, Holness does not want to follow Simpson-Miller down that road.) Since 2020, his JLP party has held a 3-to-1 advantage over the People’s National Party in Parliament, and despite polls showing the JLP trailing the PNP this year, he thinks he can eke out a victory—but only if he plays his cards exactly right.
A more subtle dilemma faces Holness over the burning question of joining the Caribbean Court of Justice, based in Trinidad, effectively ending Jamaica’s access to the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council—as five other Caribbean nations have already done. The opposition PNP is trying to make that into a serious campaign issue, so far without much leverage—but Holness has so far argued against the switch. Sure, it would be cheaper for anyone seeking an appeal, with no British-hired lawyer or expensive trip to London required —but not necessarily better.
Holness became prime minister originally in 2011, serving for a brief period during Barack Obama’s first term, after Bruce Golding’s resignation and a snap election; he later won the seat back during the last year of Obama’s presidency. His warm reception with Obama lasted at least until Trump’s surprise victory months later over Hillary Clinton. But like the pragmatic politician he is, he managed to hold on until 2021, when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office; Harris, whose father is Jamaican by birth, would have been his obvious preference for a U.S. “partner”—not Trump—during his crucial election year of 2025.
But as every politician knows, life throws you curveballs. So embracing the United States is a practical matter for Holness, despite the obvious disadvantages of cozying up to Donald Trump for a second time—a U.S. leader not immediately popular among the rank and file of either party in Jamaica, where many voters retain close ties to their extended U.S. families and most tend to vote Democratic with their hearts.
Days after meeting with Miniscule Marco in Kingston, Holness reached out to the Jamaican diaspora in Miramar, Florida, touting his administration’s accomplishments during recent years. At least he was still able to use his U.S. visa. [See “Jamaican PM speaks exclusively to NBC6,” April 4, https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/jamaican-pm-speaks-exclusively-to-nbc6-after-rubio-meeting/3583775/ .]
Andrew Holness, Prime Minister of Jamaica, seeking a third term in 2025. Public domain photo
That visit by Rubio to Jamaica—en route to separate meetings with the leaders of Guyana and Suriname—might have been a p.r. plus for Holness, IF he had won any real concessions from the new Trump administration over two crucial issues—the ongoing deportation of some 5,000 Jamaicans illegally in the United States, and the harsh new tariffs imposed days later on Jamaica and other Caricom nations—and the State Department’s worrisome travel advisory (Level 3: Reconsider all travel) currently in place for tourist-hungry Jamaica.
But no progress seems to have been achieved on any of those issues. So the jury was—still out—when the new tariffs hit full force.
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The tariff issue is certainly a slap in the face for Caricom nations like Jamaica, who import so much of their goods from the United States—and whose fragile economies cannot really afford to impose reciprocal tariffs on much-needed incoming goods.
Guyana, which Rubio had seemed to be courting so assiduously on that regional visit days earlier, was hit with the worst tariff of all—38 percent—with no real justification. It exports crude oil, rums, gold, timber, fish, shrimp, and agricultural products to the United States, and its leaders were puzzled, even dumbfounded by the severity of the tariff. The high tariff was suspended for 90 days, days after it took effect—but its future is uncertain.
It is one of two Caribbean nations with a positive trade balance (the other is Trinidad, at $287 million)—$3.9 billion in Guyana’s favor in 2024, mainly because of its crude oil exports. Its government tried mightily to put on a game face:
The government of Guyana has taken note of the reciprocal tariffs that have been announced by the United States and is engaging its relevant partners. Our government is closely engaged with our US partners to better understand the issue and have it addressed as appropriate.
But the country’s president, Irfaan Ali, clearly felt betrayed by Rubio, who was apparently sending a not-so-secret message about ending Guyana’s reliance on Chinese foreign assistance.
Meanwhile, Jamaica’s trade deficit for 2024 was $2.1 billion in favor of the United States, according to World Population Review. [See https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/us-trade-deficit-by-country .] That deficit could expand by hundreds of millions of dollars under the new tariffs, assuming sales of its exports to the U.S. fall even slightly as their prices increase.
According to its Embassy website in Washington, Jamaica exports alumina, bauxite, sugar, rum, coffee, yams, beverages, chemicals, and mineral fuels—most of it to its top trading partners, the United States, Canada, England, and The Netherlands—while importing far larger quantities of food and other consumer goods, industrial supplies, fuel, parts and accessories of capital goods, machinery and transport equipment, and construction materials.
Jamaica’s Foreign Minister Kamina Johnson Smith told the Miami Herald last week that her country is looking into the effects of its own 10 percent tariff, which was slated to go into effect this week. “The government of Jamaica has taken note of the new tariff regime,” she wrote on her X account on April 3. “Please be assured that we appreciate the public’s need for further information and clarity and will update the business community and the wider public accordingly.”
[See “Top Caribbean diplomat asks,” April 4, https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article303451141.html#storylink=cpy .]
Fellow Caricom leader Ronald Sanders, Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the United States, underscored the dilemma facing Caribbean nations who “have helped sustain American prosperity by collectively importing far more from the United States than they export, creating an enduring trade surplus in Washington’s favor,” he wrote in a recent op-ed.
Yet even these tiny nations, most with deficits favoring the United States, have not escaped the Trump tariffs, as Sanders pointed out:
Because CARICOM nations consistently favor U.S. goods, American industries, farmers and manufacturers have long found profitable markets in our small economies … Meanwhile, our own exports remain modest and pose no threat to U.S. producers, as confirmed by the U.S. Trade Representative’s annual reports to Congress.
[See “Caribbean governments react,” April 3, caribbeanlife.com/caribbean-governments-react-to-new-trump-tariffs/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=caribbeanlife-pm&utm_term=Caribbean%20Life%20Daily%20Newsletter .]
The sheer unfairness of treating small Caribbean nations as if their economies somehow threaten the huge American economy would be laughable—under ordinary circumstances. But Caribbean leaders suddenly have little choice but to plead their cases individually, and with little economic leverage, and are facing political decisions that will only hurt them economically—such as expelling Cuban doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel, to satisfy Miniscule Marco’s petty obsession on that score—if they are going to gain an exemption from the baseline tariffs, which were never justified. Or in Jamaica’s case, to get back its treasured Level 1 travel advisory …
That is the Gordian knot facing Andrew Holness as he decides what to do, and what date to set for a summer election. In the meantime, should he give in to U.S. bullying tactics—and perhaps get the tariffs lowered, or eliminated, by sending back its 400 Cuban medical personnel, which he cannot immediately replace—and perhaps win the election? Or stand up for himself, and risk getting the cold shoulder from Miniscule Marco the next time a travel advisory is issued.
It is pure, base extortion on the part of the United States, and shameful. It smells bad, and has nothing to do with diplomacy, but much to do with political blackmail.
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As a “reformed” Foreign Service Officer—I walked away from the State Department in 1997—I keep my eyes out for unusual and outrageous events occurring in countries of interest to the United States, particularly those I have served in or visited. This occasionally includes analyses of U.S. actions affecting those countries, whether wise or effective—or neither, as here—and in some cases, simply puzzling, and often bordering on unprincipled.
I served in Jamaica on my very first Foreign Service tour in 1983, when I was assigned as a junior visa officer—one of a dozen or so—in the very busy consular section at our embassy in Kingston. I have written extensively about my service there, which remains most memorable for my marriage to my second wife, then a flight attendant for Air Jamaica. The job itself was grueling, and involved having to deny nearly 90 percent of visa applicants for lack of demonstrable economic ties to the island.
It was the third year of Edward Seaga’s first term as Prime Minister—the first center-right JLP leader in a decade, desperately trying to right the economic ship after years of socialist experimentation and nationalization—and the economy was still floundering from the excesses of the Michael Manley years, when imported items were discouraged in an effort to stimulate local production and conserve scarce foreign exchange. (A good aim, on paper, that never worked in socialist reality.)
The country’s unemployment rate was high, underemployment even higher. Prospects were dim. Thousands of reasonably well-educated, English-speaking Jamaicans seeking a better life were still seeking to escape to the United States, some by immigrating legally—after being petitioned for by American-citizen relatives—but many more by adjusting status, once there, on a tourist visa. Most sought after, then as now, were Jamaican nannies and domestic servants.
“Higglers,” or entrepreneurial businesswomen with multiple-entry visas, were everywhere. They traveled back and forth by plane to Miami, bringing back scarce consumer goods—especially toys and nonperishable items not found in Jamaican stores—to sell in street stalls, making quite a good living. They were charming, if their huge bundles were occasionally annoying on the airplanes …
For 18 months, I lived across the street from the consular section, but could never walk to work. I was forced to drive a block to work every day, to avoid being accosted by hordes of visa-seekers as they gathered outside our building in reasonably orderly lines wrapping around the place. Denying dozens of visas a day, as you might imagine, won me few friends outside the smaller circle of those who already had U.S. visas and traveled often.
But even becoming friends with those who already had visas was sometimes tricky. Whenever I entertained at home, I stopped leaving out U.S. toilet paper—available only from my well-supplied commissary, not on the local market—because it kept disappearing from the holders. The locally-manufactured paper, all that was available in Jamaican stores, was more like sandpaper, and was expensive besides. (When I was invited to others’ parties, it was as often because of the U.S. wine they hoped I would bring as a gift; technically, we were not supposed to give it away to locals, but as long as I was helping drink it, I figured it was okay. Cheaper than flying to the States and bringing back their own …)
In the fall of 1983, Prime Minister Seaga was faced with a decision somewhat similar to that now facing Holness, 42 years later. He had become close friends with U.S. president Ronald Reagan early on—elected a month before Reagan, one of the few friendly moderates in the Caribbean—and invited the Reagans to visit Jamaica in 1982.
Prime Minister and Mrs. Seaga (right) welcome President and Mrs. Reagan to Jamaica, 1982. Courtesy New York Times
When the Reagan administration decided to invade the Marxist-leaning island of Grenada in October, after a civil war broke out there, Vice President George H. W. Bush first came down to Jamaica and addressed the Parliament, then met privately with Seaga—and within days, Jamaica had agreed to be a staging point for U.S. military vessels headed south. The very brief “war”—won in part, some say, because of quick Jamaican assistance—elevated Jamaica worth in the eyes of U.S. planners.
Bush came by the Embassy to shake hands with officers and staff—the first time I ever shook hands with a (future) president!
Prime Minister Seaga meets Vice President Bush in Jamaica, 1983. Public domain photo
Just what Jamaica-specific deals were struck was never publicly revealed. But the groundwork had already been laid, with the passage weeks earlier of the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (CBERA) of 1983, often called the Caribbean basin Initiative (CBI), which offered enticements—duty-free status for entry of selected exports into the United States, essentially “most-favored nation” treatment—to 28 selected nations around the regions, including Jamaica. Its language excluded certain countries “that it judged to be contrary to its interests or that had expropriated American property,” specifically Fidel Castro’s Communist Cuba, and warned others not to follow Cuba’s example for risk of losing this valuable status. CBERA went into effect on January 1, 1984.
The new U.S. vision for the Caribbean included incentives to build small factories in places like Jamaica, where textiles and other goods manufactured there could be shipped duty-free to the mainland. (I personally favored at least one new manufacturing plant for toilet paper of higher quality.) It should have worked, long-term. But the duty-free manufacturing scheme never really caught on.
Still, Jamaicans enjoyed being in the spotlight, and generally supported Seaga’s assistance to the United States during the incursion in Grenada. He still had two years left in his five-year term, but with his popularity suddenly on the rise, Seaga called a snap election after the end of the incursion—one boycotted petulantly by the PNP—and won a complete majority for a new five-year term.
For Seaga, the deal worked politically—because it benefited both sides. But according to his New York Times obituary, neither U.S. assistance in the years after 1983 nor the continuing popularity of Jamaica’s beaches and resorts were enough to secure Seaga’s political legacy. Despite increased political power and U.S. assistance in the years ahead, the Jamaican economy failed to improve significantly, plagued by high inflation and stubbornly high unemployment.
Globalization backfired, almost killing off Jamaica’s once-prized dairy cattle industry—in favor of cheaper milk imports from the United States.
After his defeat—by his old nemesis, Michael Manley—in the 1989 election, he remained opposition leader for years before finally retiring from politics in 2005. [See “Edward Seaga, who led Jamaica on a conservative path, dies at 89,” May 25, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/obituaries/edward-seaga-dead.html.]
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The collegial press briefing which Holness and Rubio held after their March 26 meeting in Kingston revealed almost nothing specific or of real significance about the substance of their talks—just generalities. As usual, Miniscule Marco did most of the talking—and proved he was more interested in spouting the Trump administration’s line about street gangs and deportations than in dealing with real issues. Holness wisely did not egg him on, but smiled thinly. He did explain how Jamaica’s crime rate was coming down, and tourists should feel safe again. [See https://www.state.gov/secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-and-jamaican-prime-minister-andrew-holness-at-a-joint-press-availability/ .]
I have yet to hear what private complaints Marco Rubio may have received from other Caricom leaders present that day—including Trinidad and Tobago’s new Prime Minister Stuart Young, along with new Caricom chief Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados, who had bristled days earlier at Rubio’s implicit threat to cancel her U.S. visa unless she got rid of her country’s Cuban medical personnel. My guess is that he got his ears pinned back by Mottley behind closed doors—he certainly needed to.
In a videotaped address released a week later, she minced few words about the “new threat” she sees facing nations in the Caribbean—from climate change, the rising cost of living, mental health struggles among youth, and misinformation to escalating crime rates. Only immediate, concerted action—with help, she hopes, from “ key partners like the United States”—will help solve these problems. She left unsaid her ideas on how to get the United States to start acting like a real partner—instead of a bully.
[For the full 10-minute Caricom speech, see YouTube video, “Everything is at risk: The Caribbean faces a new threat,” below:
To be sure, the Rubio visit was widely viewed as a bust by most observers—there were no carrots, only sticks. Only time will tell for sure if it pays off. And only Andrew Holness, still trailing in most public polls, knows what he will do next—or when he will push the button for the next Jamaican general election.
Next time: More foreign affairs in a crazy, mixed-up world