By Keith Bernard
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Thurs. April 9, 2026: The fault lines between Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) have never been more starkly exposed than in the past several months. There is a major shift underway regarding Trinidad and Tobago’s relations with the United States, and it is dealing a blow to the regional grouping’s unity. At the heart of this rupture lies a fundamental question: has the CARICOM Secretariat’s institutional posture – its policies, its diplomatic reflexes, and its strategic orientation – become a source of friction for a member state charting its own sovereign course? The evidence strongly suggests it has.
To understand the conflict, one must begin with the Secretariat’s foundational ideological commitments. The Secretariat, as the principal administrative organ of the Community with its mandate guided by the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, is responsible for the strategic management and direction of the organization. Over decades, that direction has been shaped by principles of non-intervention, non-alignment, multilateralism, and what the bloc calls the “rule of law” in international affairs. These are not inherently bad principles. But they were crafted in a geopolitical era that looks increasingly different from the one we now inhabit. Under the Trump administration’s second term, with its transactional foreign policy and its aggressive posture on Venezuela and the Caribbean basin, the Secretariat’s traditional stances are colliding directly with the realpolitik that Trinidad and Tobago’s government has decided to embrace.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has made no effort to disguise her frustration. She has stated publicly that CARICOM “is not a reliable partner at this time,” and that any organization that chooses to disparage the United States – which she called Trinidad and Tobago’s “greatest ally” – while lending support to what she characterized as the Maduro narco-government, has “clearly lost its way.” These are extraordinary words from the leader of CARICOM’s largest economy, and they did not emerge in a vacuum. They are a direct response to institutional conduct that Port of Spain perceives as out of step with Caribbean realities and geopolitical necessity.
The December 2025 episode over U.S. entry restrictions on Antiguan and Barbudan and Dominican nationals crystallized the problem. The CARICOM Bureau issued a statement expressing concern that the U.S. proclamation was taken without prior consultation and flagged the lack of clarity regarding the status of existing visas after 1 January 2026. On the surface, this seems like a reasonable diplomatic intervention. But context matters enormously. Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the U.S. had already indicated that Antiguans with valid visas would continue to enjoy uninterrupted access, and that new arrangements had been reached within three days of the proclamation – well ahead of the 180-day review timeline. The Bureau’s statement was, in effect, a piece of institutional theatre that risked antagonizing Washington without achieving anything substantive. Trinidad and Tobago refused to associate itself with it.
Persad-Bissessar distanced Port of Spain from the Bureau’s statement, recognising what she called the “sovereign right of the United States to make decisions in furtherance of its best interests.” That formulation is significant. It signals that Trinidad and Tobago is no longer willing to subordinate bilateral diplomatic imperatives to what the Secretariat decides is the appropriate collective Caribbean posture. This is not mere pique — it reflects a calculated assessment that the CARICOM Secretariat’s instinct to publicly push back against Washington serves the ideological preferences of certain member states far more than it serves Trinidad and Tobago’s national interest.
The Venezuela issue cuts even deeper. CARICOM’s majority position has been to treat the Caribbean as a “zone of peace,” resist U.S. military actions in regional waters, and maintain a studied neutrality – or sympathy – toward Caracas. The Government of Trinidad and Tobago was quick to express support for U.S. actions and refused to denounce the blockade of Cuba at the recent CELAC meeting, positions that cannot be regarded as representative of the CARICOM membership, which has advocated non-intervention and the peaceful resolution of conflict. But from Trinidad and Tobago’s vantage point, the Secretariat’s approach on Venezuela ignores the lived reality that Port of Spain must manage — hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants, a porous border, drug trafficking pressures, and a direct security relationship with Washington that no amount of bloc solidarity can replace.
The Secretariat’s apparent “radio silence” on the question of U.S. military operations in regional waters has also raised concerns about whether internal diplomatic differences are being settled or merely suppressed — with the vacuum filled by a lopsided public posture that does not reflect the full complexity of member states’ interests. For Trinidad and Tobago, which has opted for deeper engagement with Washington, that silence on substantive issues and loudness on symbolic ones represents the worst of both worlds.
The controversy over the reappointment of Secretary General Dr. Carla Barnett has added a combustible new dimension to this already strained relationship — and in many ways, it has become the most damning illustration of the Secretariat’s governance failures. Persad-Bissessar has described the process used to reappoint Barnett for a second five-year term as “surreptitious and odious,” warning that the Secretariat should “expect no quarter” from her government until the matter is transparently resolved. This is not merely a procedural complaint. It speaks to a deeper pattern of institutional exclusion that Trinidad and Tobago now sees as emblematic of how the Secretariat operates when it wants to secure a particular outcome.
The facts, as Trinidad and Tobago has laid them out, are troubling. The proposed reappointment was not included on the provisional agenda for the 50th Regular Meeting in St. Kitts and Nevis, was not considered during plenary, and was reportedly addressed only during a Heads of Government retreat. Most significantly, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, and The Bahamas were not allowed to participate when the majority decision was taken by the leaders present. The decision was then announced via a news release, with no record appearing in the official summary of confirmed decisions. As of the time of writing, no response has been received to the formal letters of inquiry sent on March 31 to both the CARICOM Chairman and the Secretary General’s office.
Trinidad and Tobago maintains that the reappointment was not conducted in accordance with Article 24 of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, which requires formal consideration by the Conference of Heads of Government. Previous reappointments, such as in 2016, followed this protocol, with decisions properly recorded and reflecting the views of all member states. The departure from that precedent – particularly in a climate where Trinidad and Tobago has been vocal in its divergence from CARICOM’s political line – raises an uncomfortable question: was the Secretariat, and those who orchestrated the retreat decision, seeking to insulate Barnett’s tenure from a potential veto by the bloc’s largest financial contributor?
Trinidad and Tobago contributes between US$4 million and US$5 million annually to CARICOM, and Persad-Bissessar has threatened to reduce that financial contribution in response to what she sees as a breakdown in accountability. She has stressed that as the country contributing approximately 22% of CARICOM’s budget, Trinidad and Tobago expects accountability and transparent adherence to agreed rules. The threat of a funding reduction is not one the Secretariat can dismiss lightly. It would force a genuine reckoning with whether the organization can sustain itself if its largest single contributor withdraws confidence – and funding – from the institution.
Not for the first time in their post-independence history, CARICOM member states find themselves in a trajectory where national and regional interests are pulling in opposite directions. The Secretariat’s Strategic Plan 2022–2030 envisions a community that is “integrated, inclusive and resilient,” but integration cannot be imposed through institutional pressure on member states whose geopolitical realities demand different alignments. Some voices have gone as far as suggesting that the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas should be amended to allow a member state whose foreign policy runs diametrically opposed to bloc interests to withdraw – or even be expelled. That such ideas are being aired publicly speaks to how seriously the institutional compact has frayed.
What CARICOM’s Secretariat has not adequately grappled with is the possibility that rigid adherence to bloc consensus in an era of great-power competition may itself be a destabilizing force. Persad-Bissessar warned that beneath the thin mask of unity lie many widening fissures that, if left unaddressed, will lead to the organization’s implosion – driven by poor management, lax accountability, factional divisions, and what she called the inappropriate meddling in the domestic politics of member states. Whether one agrees with Trinidad and Tobago’s U.S.-aligned posture or not, those structural criticisms now carry the added weight of a concrete governance failure: a Secretary General reappointed through a process that excluded key member states, violated the organization’s own rules of procedure, and has been met with institutional silence in the face of legitimate formal objections.
The CARICOM Secretariat must come to terms with an uncomfortable truth: in a region of small, vulnerable states navigating a turbulent global order, there is no single correct foreign policy answer. Demanding ideological conformity on matters as sensitive as Venezuela, Cuba, and U.S. relations – and then publicly rebuking member states that deviate – does not strengthen the bloc. Neither does circumventing the procedural safeguards that give every member state confidence in the legitimacy of collective decisions. If the Secretariat continues on this path, it risks losing not just Trinidad and Tobago’s political support, but the financial foundation on which the entire regional project depends.
