In September 2025, Trinidad and Tobago finalized a $14.6 million financial aid grant from China. At the same time, the island nation’s government has established close ties with the Trump administration — its prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, is publicly described as “the Trinidadian Trump” — supporting U.S. actions in Venezuela and its moves against narco-trafficking in the region.
The United States frequently attributes Chinese influence in the Caribbean to anti-American governments deepening ties to Beijing. But the reality is more complex, reflecting both emerging geopolitical dynamics and U.S. policies that don’t adequately account for Caribbean interests.
China’s Engagement in the Caribbean
Caribbean economies are not major commodity exporters to China and do not fit the extractive trade model that animates much U.S. concern about Chinese influence. Beijing’s so-called “debt-trap diplomacy” simply does not apply in the Caribbean. Instead, China’s economic and financial engagement with the Caribbean states addresses their specific structural vulnerabilities: infrastructure deficits, chronic public debt, limited concessional financing, and a persistent dependence on tourism and financial services, which leave island economies deeply exposed to external shocks.
China has extended approximately $8.9 billion in loans to the states of the Caribbean Community, or CARICOM, the 15-member intergovernmental political and economic union of Caribbean countries. In Jamaica, the China Development Bank financed a $457 million north-south highway through a toll concession arrangement. JISCO, a Chinese state-owned steel manufacturer, pledged to invest $150 million in Jamaica’s aluminum sector. In Trinidad and Tobago, China channeled over $100 million into the National Academy for the Performing Arts, embedded Huawei and the Shanghai Construction Group in local infrastructure, and formalized the Belt and Road partnership in 2018. These are not peripheral transactions. They represent deliberate institutional embedding — the slow construction of interdependence that is far more durable than trade flows.
There is also a significant geopolitical dimension to China’s economic engagement in the region. Five CARICOM states (Belize, Haiti, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines) still recognize Taiwan, making the Caribbean the world’s densest concentration of Taipei’s remaining diplomatic partners. Beijing’s patient engagement is designed, in part, to erode these countries' relationships with Taiwan, and U.S. inattention creates the conditions for it.
CARICOM states, however, remain economically and institutionally oriented toward Washington. But U.S. policy volatility — tariff shocks, USAID restructuring, and unilateral militarism in the Caribbean Sea that fractured CARICOM’s diplomatic cohesion — has made overreliance on Washington a structural liability. Furthermore, the weaponization of U.S. visas to isolate Cuba from its CARICOM partners has generated shortages in Caribbean health systems that hamper Washington’s image while weakening regional governments. By threatening to revoke U.S. visas of Caribbean officials who host Cuban medical missions, Washington is openly conditioning cooperation with the region on alignment toward its policy to economically coerce Havana. In this context, China, which offers capital and institutional presence without demanding ideological alignment, has become an increasingly attractive partner.
Crucially, this dynamic transcends left-right politics. Trinidad and Tobago under Persad-Bissessar — ideologically closer to the current White House than any other CARICOM government — has deepened its relationship with China. Jamaica, under Andrew Holness, who is not a progressive leader, has consistently backed Beijing's positions at the United Nations and accepted Chinese infrastructure financing for over a decade. China is the second-largest import source in both Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, just behind the United States.
Partnership Over Pressure
The Trump administration has said that it wants to reassert the United States’ “preeminence” in the Western Hemisphere while diminishing China’s foothold in the region. But its erratic and unilateral policies have largely proven counterproductive to those objectives. Instead of focusing on dominating the region, the United States could build meaningful, mutually beneficial partnerships with Caribbean countries, thereby lessening their need to turn to Beijing. Here’s how:
- Congress should authorize a Caribbean infrastructure financing window. Chinese infrastructure offers are gaining ground because credible U.S. alternatives are absent. The Caribbean Basin Initiative’s preferential trade access should be protected and expanded, not eroded under tariff reform. The Caribbean Basin Initiative, with its trade arrangement, is still the most tangible output of U.S.-Caribbean trade cooperation, but tariffs will hamper Caribbean products’ entry into the U.S. market.
- Reframe engagement around Caribbean development priorities. Climate resilience, debt sustainability, and infrastructure are the issues that drive Caribbean foreign policy calculations. A U.S. posture focused solely on counter-narcotics and hard-power projection provides China the space to grow its influence.
- Consult CARICOM before acting in the region. U.S. strikes against alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean have killed dozens and damaged U.S. standing across the region. Genuine multilateral consultation is not a concession — it is a structural precondition for durable U.S. influence.
Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago demonstrate that Chinese influence in the Caribbean should not be understood as stemming from anti-American politics or extractive trade. Rather, Caribbean states, like many other countries in the emerging multipolar world, are trying to solve real structural problems in a system where Washington too often pressures without offering partnership.
This situation extends beyond CARICOM governments to the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean. Amid the Trump administration’s volatility, Caribbean governments are likely to deepen diversification rather than retreat from it. For Washington, the choice is no longer between influence and decline, but between building a credible development relationship on Caribbean terms or watching Beijing continue to fill the gap. Caribbean autonomy is not mutually exclusive with strong relations with Washington, but rather a consequence of today’s evolving geopolitical realities.
