On April 2, 2025, President Donald Trump announced a comprehensive tariff policy that includes a 10% baseline tariff on all imports from countries outside of Canada and Mexico, effective April 5, 2025. This move appears to be a part of a broader effort to address the U.S. trade deficit and promote domestic manufacturing. Additionally, targeted reciprocal tariffs are expected to affect imports from more than 60 countries. As these changes take effect, Caribbean nations are among those that may be impacted, and the region’s trade relationship with the U.S. will likely be influenced by these new tariffs.
Being curious about the value of imports from the Caribbean into the USA, I did some searching and found a Trade Economics article (which was based on UN data) that provided information on United States Imports by Country (see here). I searched for Caribbean countries that are either Member or Associate Member states of CARICOM and compiled a table in the Excel below:
By the way, based on the above numbers, total value of imports from the Caribbean into the USA during 2024 was: $12.2B USD. Only three countries in the Caribbean crossed the billion dollar mark: The Bahamas ($1.84B), Guyana ($5.51B) and Trinidad and Tobago ($3.49B).
The TE article also featured a ‘Treemap’ (a method for displaying hierarchical data as a set of nested rectangles). Having seen this type of visualization before (if you know about WinDirStat, you know what I mean), I figured I’d take the data from the Table above, and make my own Treemap using Excel:
Here’s another Treemap, this time, it visualizes Mexico, Canada, China and The Caribbean:
From the above, we can see that the value of US Imports from the Caribbean are a a drop in the proverbial bucket (more like a drop in the ocean) compared to larger countries (e.g., China, Mexico and Canada). However, the impacts of the tariff policy across The Region will be significant and outsized.
