The Caribbean AI Moment? – Trinidad Got There First. Who’s Next And Who Pays For It?

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By News Americas Business Editor

News Americas, MIAMI, FL, Sun. July 26, 2026: the region’s first stop. The question the rest of the Caribbean should be asking isn’t whether this was a good deal for Trinidad – it’s what it will take for the next island to be next, and who finances the gap between “signed MOU” and “operational campus” in the Caribbean AI race.

That gap is the real story. Trinidad and Tobago has signed a trio of agreements with U.S. companies that could bring more than US$5 billion in investment to the twin-island republic – the first data center agreements of their kind between major U.S. technology and services firms and any Caribbean nation. But the deals also expose, in stark numbers, exactly what a small island grid and water system look like when asked to absorb hyperscale AI infrastructure: a 2.4-gigawatt national generation capacity being asked to accommodate up to 450 additional megawatts of demand, in a country where parts of the population already receive water on a rationed schedule.

The Memoranda of Understanding, signed July 11 under Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s administration, set the framework for two large-scale data center projects and the revival of a dormant steel plant. Foreign and CARICOM Affairs Minister Sean Sobers signed on the government’s behalf, with officials crediting U.S. government facilitation for bringing the parties together.

The Deals

Professional services giant Ernst & Young signed on to develop a 300-megawatt data center using its Energy to Intelligence platform, partnering with third parties on construction. A second agreement with Hummingbird AI Holdings, a Florida-based firm led by Massy Holdings non-executive director Marc-Kwesi Farrell, outlines a 150-megawatt AI infrastructure and data center campus, with room to scale up to 500 megawatts. First operations are targeted for early 2028, pending due diligence.

A third MOU with Pinnacle Steel and Vanadium Corporation covers recommissioning the iron and steel plant at Point Lisas — a facility that, if fully developed, officials say could eventually supply up to half of U.S. demand for vanadium, a metal used in aerospace and defense manufacturing.

Combined, the government projects the three initiatives could generate more than 5,000 jobs, spanning construction, engineering, cybersecurity and facility operations.

A structurally different kind of capital

Caribbean economies are used to two kinds of foreign capital: tourism development and commodity extraction. AI infrastructure is a third category entirely – capital-intensive, long-horizon, and dependent on power and connectivity rather than beaches or barrels. That’s precisely why it pulls in adjacent investment rather than sitting in isolation: cloud providers, network operators, specialized contractors, and – critically – whoever finances the grid and water upgrades a hyperscale campus requires before it can switch on.

The infrastructure gap is the opportunity

The agreements are non-binding frameworks, not final investment decisions – each project still faces technical, commercial, and regulatory due diligence before ground is broken. And the questions being raised locally are the right ones. Data centers, particularly AI-focused facilities, are heavy consumers of both electricity and water for cooling. Trinidad and Tobago’s total generation capacity sits at roughly 2.4 gigawatts, and large parts of the country already operate on scheduled water supply, with some homes relying on tanks because taps run as rarely as once a week. A recent United Nations University report estimates data centers could account for close to 3% of global electricity use by 2030 – a figure that sharpens exactly what a 300-to-500-megawatt buildout would demand of a grid and water system already under strain.

That gap – between the capital arriving for the data centers and the capital still needed for the power and water infrastructure underneath them – is where the next wave of Caribbean deal flow sits. It’s a financing conversation as much as a construction one.

Who’s next

Whether or not these specific projects reach financial close, they signal something every Caribbean government, investment promotion agency, and developer should be watching closely: global AI infrastructure capital has started actively scouting the region, and Trinidad moved first. The islands and territories positioning themselves now – with grid capacity, water resilience plans, and investment-ready proposals in hand – are the ones likely to catch the next wave of this capital, rather than watching it pass them by.

Invest Caribbean and AI Capital Exchange (AICE) work with pre-qualified borrowers – governments, developers and investors – pursuing exactly this kind of energy, water and infrastructure financing across the region. If the Caribbean’s AI infrastructure moment is one your project or government wants in on, start with a Capital Readiness Check.

RELATED: Energy Crisis – Why Is The Caribbean Still Importing Energy?

The Guyana Ferry Disaster Is The Caribbean’s Worst Since 1970

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By NAN Staff Writer, NewsAmericas Now

News Americas, GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Sun. July 26, 2026: With 73 bodies now confirmed and 30 more people still unaccounted for, Guyana’s MV Barima ferry disaster has become the deadliest maritime tragedy in the Caribbean since the August 1, 1970 sinking of the MV Christena off St. Kitts and Nevis – a disaster that claimed 233 lives and remains the worst in the region’s recorded history.

With 73 dead and 30 missing, Guyana’s MV Barima disaster is the Caribbean’s deadliest since the 1970 Christena tragedy

Guyana Prime Minister Mark Phillips has said that of the roughly 179 people believed to have been aboard when the MV Barima capsized off the Essequibo coast on July 19th, 76 have been rescued, and 73 bodies recovered, with 30 people still missing. Search and recovery operations, now in their second week, will continue “for as long as is necessary,” Phillips said, adding that the overturned vessel has not yet been righted and additional remains are expected once it is.

If even a fraction of the missing are confirmed dead, Guyana’s toll will surpass 100 – a number no other Caribbean maritime disaster has approached in more than half a century.

A myth worth correcting

The Caribbean’s worst maritime disaster was the Christena of Nevis

As comparisons between the two disasters have circulated online, a persistent claim has taken hold: that both ferries were built in Guyana. That’s only half true. The MV Christena was indeed built in Georgetown, then the capital of British Guiana, constructed by Sprostons Limited and completed in 1959 for the government of St. Christopher, Nevis and Anguilla. The MV Barima, however, was built roughly 4,300 miles away, in Port Glasgow, Scotland, by Ferguson Brothers, and completed in 1939 as one of three sister vessels — Pomeroon, Lady Northcote and Barima – ordered for British Guiana’s own Transport and Harbors Department.

So while Christena was Guyanese-built and later exported into service in St. Kitts and Nevis, the MV Barima was foreign-built but has spent its entire 87-year life in Guyanese waters. Both vessels, in other words, are woven into Guyana’s maritime history – just not in the way the online rumor suggests.

Two ships, two eras, one enduring pattern

Beyond the builders, the vessels could hardly be more different. Christena was a compact 66 feet with a 16-foot beam and just 11 years old when it sank. the MV Barima, at 125 feet 9 inches and nearly twice Christena’s width, was 87 years old – one of the oldest passenger vessels still in active government service anywhere in the hemisphere.

Both, however, were acquired under colonial administration decades before independence – the MV Barima in 1939, 27 years before Guyana’s 1966 independence; the Christena in 1959, 24 years before St. Kitts and Nevis became independent in 1983. And both disasters share a chilling institutional thread: neither ship’s manifest reflected who was actually on board.

Guyanese authorities have confirmed that at least 35 of the Barima’s 67 initially rescued passengers weren’t listed on its official manifest of 116 passengers and 17 crew. Christena’s 1970 Commission of Inquiry similarly found no reliable system for counting passengers before departure, despite the vessel carrying more than double its rated capacity of roughly 150 when it went down.

A reckoning still unfolding

Guyana’s government has ordered a multi-agency investigation into the Barima’s loading, manifest discrepancies, and crew conduct after the captain and first engineer, both in custody, tested positive for cannabis after their rescue. And the country’s President says an independent international Commission of Inquiry will be appointed to conduct a full investigation into the MV Barima tragedy even as his Prime Minister has said the MV Barima was not insured, 

Twenty-two funerals have already taken place over the past three days, with more planned as families continue the heartbreaking task of burying their dead.

Fifty-six years after Christena forced the region to confront how little accountability existed for who boards a government ferry, Guyana is being asked the same question again.

RELATED: The MV Barima Predates Guyana’s Independence By 27 Years

Squash Associate Jahreme “J-Man” Shelton Set for November Jury Trial in Florida Double-Murder Case

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Jahreme Shelton

Jamaican national Jahreme “J-Man” Shelton, an alleged associate of dancehall artiste Squash, is scheduled to stand trial before a Broward County jury on November 9, 2026, in connection with a fatal double shooting that claimed the lives of two men nearly four years ago.

The Questions That Build Centuries: Five Questions Every University President Must Answer Before Taking Office

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By Dr. Isaac Newton

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Sat. July 25, 2026: Every university president inherits more than campuses, budgets, traditions, rankings, strategic plans, and expectations. Every president inherits trust. That trust is the bridge connecting an institution’s founding purpose with the future it has not yet seen. The presidency is not primarily an office of administration. It is a covenant of stewardship. Buildings can be renovated. Budgets can be replenished. Reputations can be restored. Lost purpose is far more difficult to recover. The defining moments of a presidency rarely begin with the first decision a leader makes. They begin with the questions a leader has the wisdom and humility to ask. Leadership is measured less by the problems it solves than by the future it prepares.

Every enduring presidency begins with a question of institutional necessity: If this university did not exist today, would society create it tomorrow? If so, for what indispensable purpose? Heritage deserves gratitude, but history alone never justifies continued existence. Every generation must earn the right to remain indispensable. Institutions survive because they continue to solve problems that matter, illuminate truths that endure, and cultivate leaders the world cannot afford to lose. A university that merely preserves its past gradually surrenders its future.

The second question defines institutional distinctiveness: What graduate should leave this university unlike any graduate another institution consistently produces? Universities do not change the world because they award degrees. They change the world because they form women and men whose character, intellect, faith, courage, and commitment to service become living expressions of their highest ideals. Diplomas recognize achievement. Lives demonstrate influence. Every graduate extends the reach of the institution into homes, communities, laboratories, classrooms, businesses, hospitals, courts, churches, and governments. In time, a university becomes the accumulated character of the people it has formed.

The third question demands uncommon discernment: Which traditions express our mission so faithfully they must endure? Which practices have outlived their usefulness and should give way to better ones? Great universities understand a distinction weaker institutions often overlook. Mission is permanent. Methods are temporary. Convictions anchor identity. Practices exist to advance those convictions, never to replace them. Wise presidents preserve what is sacred, strengthen what is effective, and release what no longer advances the institution’s calling. Stability without renewal breeds stagnation. Innovation without purpose produces drift. Institutions that endure protect both identity and relevance with equal resolve.

The fourth question extends leadership beyond the horizon of a single administration: How will every major decision strengthen human flourishing, advance truth, and create value for generations yet unborn? The fifth demands moral courage: What decision should we have the courage to make today before history asks why we waited? Every presidency eventually arrives at the moment when comfort confronts conviction. Exceptional leaders meet that moment with disciplined reflection. Does this deepen our mission? Does it prepare students for a future we cannot yet see? Does it strengthen excellence, character, and service together? Will it matter a generation from now? Leadership begins where convenience ends, because stewardship always chooses tomorrow over applause today.

The enduring measure of a university president is never the number of buildings constructed, budgets balanced, rankings achieved, campaigns completed, or speeches applauded. Those accomplishments deserve recognition, but they are not history’s final measure. History remembers institutions that became more faithful to their mission, more courageous in their leadership, more rigorous in their scholarship, more compassionate in their service, and more transformative in the lives they shaped because someone accepted the privilege of stewardship. Buildings weather. Rankings fluctuate. Endowments rise and fall. A life formed in truth, wisdom, faith, and service continues to shape families, professions, communities, nations, and generations long after every administration has passed. The truest legacy of a presidency is not the campus it leaves behind, but the people it sends into the world.

History rarely asks if a president was admired. It asks a more demanding question: Did those who followed inherit an institution stronger in purpose, richer in character, and better prepared to serve the future than the one entrusted to its care? Every presidency writes its own verdict through thousands of decisions, large and small, seen and unseen. Time preserves the evidence. Generations live with the consequences. History simply reads the verdict aloud.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Isaac Newton is a leadership strategist, governance scholar, ordained minister, author, and President of Paramount Communication & Marketing, LLC. Educated at the University of Southern Caribbean, Oakwood University, Princeton, Columbia, and Harvard, he advises leaders across government, higher education, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector on ethical leadership, governance, institutional renewal, and organizational excellence. He is the author of several books and coauthor of Steps to Good Governance, When Nations Kneel, Daring to Hope, and the forthcoming The Belief Code.

RELATED: Why The Teacher Standing Before A Child May Be The Most Important Leadership Decision A School Makes

Where Is The US Support For The Guyana Ferry Disaster?

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NewsAmericas Editorial

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. July 24, 2026: Just days after US officials stood in Washington promising to help lead Guyana’s energy and infrastructure future, the country was hit by one of its worst maritime disasters in decades. So where has that promised American partnership been in the recovery?

As the MV Barima death toll climbed past 72 this week, the US response has amounted to a single social media post from Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and a statement from the US Embassy in Guyana, both offering condolences. Neither US President Donald Trump nor Secretary of State Marco Rubio has personally commented on the disaster. No US personnel, vessels or equipment have been reported as part of the search and recovery operation.

Who actually showed up

Compare that to the countries that sent people and equipment into the water. France deployed a 15-member military team from French Guiana, including 12 specialist divers, two medics and a mechanic, to join the search. Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar announced her government had mobilized air and naval assets along with Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force personnel, including a Coast Guard vessel. Brazil’s navy joined the recovery effort as well, assisting with diving missions at the wreck site. Even the CARICOM Private Sector Organisation pledged to stand ready to assist.

China’s response has mirrored Washington’s: the Chinese Embassy in Guyana said it was “closely following” the search and extended sympathy, but has not been reported as providing personnel or equipment either. The European Union, Canada and the United Kingdom similarly offered only condolences.

The contrast that’s hard to ignore

Just last week, Deputy Secretary Landau himself addressed a US-Guyana Investment Enabling Forum in Washington, where officials described positioning American companies to “lead in energy, infrastructure, and other sectors central to” Guyana’s growth as a strategic priority. That rhetoric of partnership and American commitment to Guyana’s future has not translated into operational support during the country’s actual moment of need.

Guyana holds one of the fastest-growing oil economies in the world, and Washington has spent months courting a deeper commercial relationship with Georgetown, paired with public reassurances about respecting the country’s sovereignty. Whether that relationship extends to showing up when Guyana is drowning, literally, is a question this week has left unanswered.

For those families facing the grueling task of burying their dead, including Rachel Wells’ surviving husband, now left to bury his wife and their three children, Nathaniel Jr., 8, Natalia, 5, and Ezekiel, 3, the US silence is mind-numbing. Even ExxonMobil, so often accused of profiting quietly off Guyana’s oil wealth while giving little back, moved faster than Washington, redirecting all ticket proceeds from next month’s Guyana Amazon Warriors Super League final to victims’ families. Washington sent a condolence post.

RELATED: Funerals Begin For Guyana Ferry Disaster Victims As Recovery Total Rises To 72 And Vigil Set For NYC

South Florida Man To Spend 20 Years In Jail For Laundering COVID Relief Money That Helped Kill Haiti President

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By NAN Staff Writer, NewsAmericas Now

News Americas, CORAL SPRINGS, FL, Fri. July 24, 2026: A Coral Springs man was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison Thursday for laundering fraudulently obtained pandemic relief funds that helped finance the 2021 assassination of Haiti President Jovenel Moise. U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra handed down the sentence in Miami federal court after Keegan Harricharan, 42, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida announced.

How the money moved

Prosecutors said Harricharan and a co-conspirator, Jacob Israel, fraudulently obtained roughly $840,827 in Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan funds issued under the CARES Act, beginning in June 2020, with Israel and associates pocketing about $126,124 in kickbacks. Harricharan ran a Coral Springs company called TNR Holding Group Inc., which prosecutors say he used to move the fraud proceeds toward the assassination plot.

During the spring of 2021, Harricharan met repeatedly with members of the conspiracy in South Florida, where the group discussed funding, weapons, ammunition and personnel for the operation, according to court records. Between May 18 and May 28, 2021, about $175,000 in fraud proceeds landed in the TNR Holding bank account; Harricharan quickly wired the money to co-defendant Walter Veintemilla for distribution to other plotters. Weeks later, in early June, he wired another $80,000, including EIDL funds, through the same pipeline.

U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida said the case shows how financial crime can fuel far more dangerous plots, saying Harricharan helped funnel stolen taxpayer money into a conspiracy that ultimately ended in bloodshed and political violence.

The assassination

On July 7, 2021, a team of Colombian mercenaries entered Moise’s private residence in Port-au-Prince and exchanged gunfire with security guards. The attackers shot and killed Moise, 53, and wounded First Lady Martine Moise, while the couple’s children hid inside the home during the attack. The killing plunged Haiti into what has become years of continued political and security turmoil.

Part of a broader prosecution

Harricharan’s sentencing is the latest in a yearslong prosecution spanning Miami federal court. Four other defendants in the case were convicted at trial in May. A fifth defendant is scheduled for trial later this year, and a sixth, who pleaded guilty, awaits sentencing in December. Previous sentences in the broader case have included life imprisonment for former Haitian Sen. John Joel Joseph, Haitian-Chilean national Rodolphe Jaar, and Colombian ex-army officer Germán Alejandro Rivera García, all convicted or pleaded guilty to roles in the plot to kidnap or kill Moise.

NewsAmericasNow will continue following developments in the ongoing prosecution of those responsible for the assassination of Haiti’s former president.

A $647 Million US Caribbean Operation Has Killed 205 People And Congress Says It’s Not Even Legal

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By Staff Writer, NewsAmericas Now

News Americas, WASHINGTON, D.C., Thurs. July 23, 2026: A US Caribbean operation and military campaign that has killed at least 205 people in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific has cost American taxpayers more than $647 million – and, according to Congress’s own nonpartisan research arm, almost none of the policy driving it has ever been authorized by law.

That finding comes from a Congressional Research Service report, “U.S. Foreign Policy in the Western Hemisphere: Issues for Congress,” published on May 26th for members of Congress and their staff. The report documents how the Trump administration has reshaped US policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean almost entirely through executive orders, presidential proclamations, and bilateral agreements – without a single law passed by Congress to authorize, codify, or constrain any of it. Efforts to invoke the War Powers Resolution to check the campaign have failed by razor-thin margins.

The toll and the cost

Since September 2025, the campaign – known as Operation Southern Spear – has carried out dozens of lethal strikes on small boats accused of drug trafficking in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific. As of early May, at least 205 people had been killed, including seven missing and presumed dead, while only three people have been captured alive and two extradited to the United States. The Trump administration has provided little public evidence connecting each vessel or victim to drug trafficking, and the overwhelmingly lethal ratio – 205 killed against three captured – has drawn criticism from legal experts who argue the campaign functions less like law enforcement and more like undeclared warfare.

The U.S. military started attacking boats off the coast of Venezuela on Sept. 2; the Trump administration has said it’s part of an effort to thwart drug smuggling. The U.S. has since struck at least 59 boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. In October 2025, President Donald Trump declared that the U.S. is in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and designated some as terrorist organizations.

Rights groups like Amnesty International called it “extra-judicial killings.” “With nearly 200 killings, these extrajudicial killings are becoming normalized,” said Amnesty International USA’s National Director for Government Relations, Amanda Klasing. “Not only are these killings illegal, they are immoral. People of good conscience cannot allow this to continue, yet Congress has so far failed to halt, or even slow down, this lethal and unlawful campaign.”

A Department of War Inspector General report found the operation cost more than $647 million in its first two quarters alone, with additional strikes conducted since that accounting period likely pushing the total higher. Family members of people killed in at least one strike have filed wrongful death lawsuits in US federal court, arguing their relatives were fishermen and laborers with no connection to trafficking. The United Kingdom reportedly stopped sharing maritime intelligence with the US late last year over concerns that its intelligence was being used to facilitate killings without due process.

Executive action, not law

The CRS report is notable for what it doesn’t find: congressional authorization. It describes a hemisphere-wide policy shift – the strikes, tariffs imposed on regional allies, the military capture of Venezuela’s president, and the rollback of longstanding democracy-promotion programs – carried out almost entirely by executive action. That distinction matters because it means the policy remains, in the report’s own framing, legally vulnerable and potentially reversible, without the durable legitimacy a congressional vote would provide.

The doctrine underlying the campaign, dubbed the “Trump Corollary” to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine in the administration’s November 2025 National Security Strategy, asserts the US will actively enforce primacy across the Western Hemisphere to prevent migration, secure cooperation against cartels, and block rival powers – chiefly China – from gaining influence.

A region reacting unevenly

The Caribbean Community has responded to the surrounding pressure unevenly. Some CARICOM governments have joined the broader Americas Counter Cartel Coalition, also called the “Shield of the Americas,” a 17-nation security alliance the administration launched in March. It focuses on deploying military capabilities against narco-terrorist networks.

“Cooperate in the following areas: whole-of-government efforts regarding border security; countering narcoterrorism and trafficking; securing critical infrastructure; and other areas as mutually determined” and “Join a coalition to combat narco-terrorism and other shared threats to the Western Hemisphere” states the memorandum signed in Doral, Florida.

Others have voiced concern about sovereignty, and CARICOM foreign ministers have pushed to accelerate the CARICOM Single Market and Economy in part to reduce the region’s dependence on Washington.

For a region built substantially on tourism and small, trade-dependent economies, a US military campaign of this scale and cost operating without firm legal footing – one that has already killed people from Caribbean and neighboring nations – carries consequences that reach well beyond the current news cycle.

NewsAmericasNow will continue tracking Operation Southern Spear, the “Trump Corollary,” and Congress’s response as the policy develops.

Caribbean Wages 2026: Guyana And Suriname’s Oil Boom vs. Some Of The Region’s Lowest Pay

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By NAN BUSINESS EDITOR | NewsAmericasNow.com

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. July 24, 2026: Where do Caribbean wages stand in 2026, amid rising costs of living? News Americas decided to investigate – especially as Guyana and Suriname are, by nearly every measure, becoming the Caribbean’s next oil powerhouses.

Guyana is already pumping roughly 650,000 barrels of oil a day from ExxonMobil’s offshore Stabroek Block – a resource base exceeding 11 billion barrels of oil equivalent that has made it the fastest-growing economy on earth. Suriname is not far behind: TotalEnergies and partners committed $10.5 billion to the GranMorgu project in October 2024, targeting first oil by 2028 from reserves estimated at more than 750 million barrels.

Both governments are moving fast to show the wealth on the ground – new roads, bridges and infrastructure projects are underway or planned across both countries, funded in large part by oil revenue and the borrowing power it unlocks.

And yet, according to wage data compiled by wage.is and analyzed by NewsAmericasnow, Guyana and Suriname have the two lowest statutory minimum wages anywhere in the Caribbean: Suriname at $1.40 an hour, and Guyana at $1.66 an hour – lower than many other territory in the region, including nations with no oil at all.

To be clear, this is about the wage floor, not the whole economy. Oil-sector engineers, executives and skilled professionals in both countries earn far more than minimum wage, and their earnings aren’t reflected in this comparison. What the numbers do show is that the region’s lowest-paid workers – the people cleaning, driving, serving and laboring at the base of these economies – are earning less than their counterparts anywhere else in the Caribbean, even as their countries sit on some of the most valuable oil reserves in the hemisphere.

At the very bottom of the regional table sit Cuba and Haiti – but for entirely different reasons than Guyana and Suriname. Cuba’s minimum wage, tied to a peso in free fall against the US dollar, converts to just $0.03–0.05 an hour even after a 53 percent nominal increase took effect July 1. Haiti’s $0.34–0.74 an hour reflects a different crisis altogether: a state contending with entrenched gang violence and currency instability rather than an oil boom. Neither nation’s low wages can be attributed to energy wealth – they simply mark the floor against which the rest of the region, including Guyana and Suriname, can be measured.

The Region’s Full Wage Picture

Across 24 Caribbean territories, minimum wages range from just above zero to nearly $14 an hour:

Trinidad and Tobago – the Caribbean’s longest-established oil and gas producer, with decades of hydrocarbon revenue behind it – sits at $3.00 an hour, still among the lower tier of the region despite generations of energy wealth. It is a pattern worth noting: none of CARICOM’s three oil and gas producers rank in the top half of the region’s wage table.

Building Fast, Paying Slow

Guyana’s government has moved aggressively to convert oil revenue into visible infrastructure – new highways, bridges and energy projects have become a hallmark of President Irfaan Ali’s administration, even as this outlet has previously reported on questions surrounding a private agricultural estate built with resources whose origin the president says predates his time in office. Suriname’s Staatsolie has likewise signaled, through its stake in GranMorgu, that oil development will bring “significant positive economic spin-off through the deployment of local labor and the procurement of goods and services.”

Neither country’s minimum wage has kept pace with that infrastructure push. Guyana’s statutory minimum wage of $1.66 an hour translates to roughly $285 a month – a figure that has drawn scrutiny as the country’s GDP has grown at rates unmatched almost anywhere in the world. Suriname’s $1.40 an hour, at roughly $280 a month, is the lowest in the entire Caribbean, even as the country prepares to become a major offshore oil producer within two years.

A Regional Pattern Worth Watching

None of this proves oil wealth causes low wages – Suriname, in particular, has not yet begun producing offshore oil, so its current minimum wage predates any revenue from GranMorgu entirely. What the data does show is a consistent gap: the three CARICOM nations most associated with oil and gas – Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago – all sit below the regional median for minimum wage, while smaller, non-oil territories like Barbados, the Cayman Islands and the French collectivities of Saint Martin and Saint Barths pay their lowest earners substantially more.

As both Guyana and Suriname race to build the physical infrastructure of their oil futures – the roads, the bridges, the ports – the question their lowest-paid workers are left asking is a simple one: when does the wage floor catch up to the boom?

Diversifying beyond oil? AICE works with borrowers building the non-extractive economy – from agro-processing to manufacturing. Start your Capital Readiness Check.

Trump’s New Tariffs Hit These Four Caribbean Countries

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By NAN Business Editor, NewsAmericas Now

News Americas, WASHINGTON, D.C., Fri. July 24, 2026: US President Trump is imposing new tariffs on dozens of U.S. trading partners, including four Caribbean nations, after determining they have failed to adequately enforce bans on imports made with forced labor.

The Bahamas, the Dominican Republic and Guyana will face a 12.5% tariff, while Trinidad and Tobago will face a 10% tariff, under action U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced Thursday. The new tariffs apply to 60 economies in total, accounting for 99% of U.S. imports, and take effect as temporary 10% worldwide tariffs Trump had imposed under a separate authority expire at 12:01 a.m. Friday.

“The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it; it’s well past time for our trading partners to do the same,” Greer said in a statement. “Today’s action will begin to correct what is both a human rights abuse and distortive trade practice to improve the welfare of workers everywhere.”

Ironically, all four countries have signed on to Trump’s Shield of the Americas, and Trinidad and Tobago in particular has been front and center in its support of the US amid angst with other CARICOM nations. Guyana last week saw the US State Department host an investment forum to push American businesses to invest there.

Why these tariffs, and why now

The administration is invoking Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, a more durable legal authority than the emergency powers Trump previously used to justify sweeping global tariffs. The Supreme Court struck down those earlier tariffs earlier this year, ruling that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not authorize them and forcing the administration to refund duties already collected. Trump had then relied on temporary Section 122 tariffs, which are capped at 150 days by law and expire Friday. Section 301, by contrast, allows the president to impose tariffs against countries found to engage in “unjustifiable,” “unreasonable” or “discriminatory” trade practices, and has previously survived legal challenges when used against China.

The forced labor investigation began in March, when USTR opened probes into 60 economies’ enforcement of import bans on goods made with forced labor. Following two rounds of public hearings and more than 2,100 public comments, USTR determined 54 of those economies, including all four Caribbean nations named, have failed to impose and effectively enforce such a ban. A separate group of six economies, including Canada, Mexico and the European Union, were found to have failed to effectively enforce a ban they do have in place.

Oil, gas, fertilizer and goods qualifying for duty-free status under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement are exempt from the new tariffs.

What it means for the Caribbean

The tariffs add a new layer of economic pressure on four Caribbean economies already navigating a complex relationship with Washington on trade, security and investment. Guyana in particular has been the subject of an intensifying US commercial courtship in recent months, with American officials publicly pushing to position US companies to lead the country’s energy and infrastructure sectors even as this new tariff adds friction to its broader trade relationship with Washington.

Human rights advocates offered mixed reactions to the broader tariff action. Martina Vandenberg, founder and president of the Human Trafficking Legal Center, said import bans can be “a potentially effective tool in combating forced labor across the globe,” but urged a phased approach so countries have time to build enforcement mechanisms, warning that without it, “the import bans will be thin slips of paper with no enforcement.” Isabelle Glimcher, a senior research scientist for global labor at the NYU Stern Center for Human Rights, noted the tariffs are structured around what countries import rather than what they produce domestically, though she said the threat of tariffs has already pushed some countries to strengthen their own forced labor import policies.

Tariffs are ultimately paid by the US companies importing the goods, costs that are often passed on to American consumers, and the administration is rolling out the new levies just months ahead of the November midterm elections.

NewsAmericasNow will continue tracking how the new tariffs affect trade between the US and the Caribbean.

The MV Barima Predates Guyana’s Independence By 27 Years

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By Staff Writer, NewsAmericas Now

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. July 24, 2026: The MV Barima, the ferry that capsized off Guyana’s coast on July 19, killing at least 65 people with dozens more still unaccounted for, was not built for Guyana. It was built for a colony that no longer exists – 27 years before that colony became an independent nation.

Built for a colony that no longer exists

The MV Barima was born on the River Clyde in Port Glasgow, Scotland, at the yard of Ferguson Brothers – a shipbuilder that still operates today as Ferguson Marine. According to the company’s own heritage records, work began on a passenger-cargo vessel named the Pomeroon, which underwent sea trials in January 1936.

The yard then built two sister vessels, the Lady Northcote and the Barima, which were completed in 1939. All three were ordered through the Crown Agents for the Colonies on behalf of the Transport and Harbors Department of British Guiana Railways, built specifically to stitch together a colonial territory by water – decades before Guyana would become an independent nation on May 26, 1966.

The Barima was a twin-screw vessel of modest ambition by design – built to cruise at roughly 8.5 knots, carrying the cargo and passenger loads of a colony whose coastal trade bore little resemblance to a modern independent nation’s. When it capsized on July 18, nearly six decades after Guyana’s independence, the vessel was carrying 179 people and cargo, a load far exceeding what its rigid, nearly 90-year-old hull, engineered under colonial administration, was ever built to safely stabilize.

An echo of the 1970 Christena disaster

The Barima’s capsizing bears an unsettling resemblance to another Caribbean maritime tragedy from a similar era: the MV Christena, the government ferry that disappeared beneath the waters of The Narrows between St. Kitts and Nevis on August 1, 1970, killing 233 people and leaving only 91 survivors — one of the deadliest maritime disasters in Caribbean history. The Christena was smaller than the Barima, at about 66 feet long with a 16-foot beam versus the Barima’s roughly 126 feet, but both were aging government ferries serving as the primary lifeline for isolated island and coastal communities, and both capsized carrying more people than their design and era were ever built to accommodate.

A pattern that predates both disasters

The Christena’s sinking led to a Commission of Inquiry that found the vessel had been dangerously overloaded and improperly loaded with cargo positioned to destabilize it – findings that reshaped maritime safety oversight across the Eastern Caribbean in the years that followed. Guyana has similarly launched an independent Commission of Inquiry into the Barima’s capsizing, with Prime Minister Mark Phillips confirming a full investigation into potential criminal negligence and institutional failures within the country’s maritime administration.

Whether an independent nation, nearly 60 years removed from the colonial administration that ordered the Barima into existence, still relied on that same vessel as recently as this month is itself a question the Commission of Inquiry may have to reckon with – one that goes beyond mechanical failure, to what infrastructure a country inherits at independence, and how long it can go without replacing it.

NewsAmericasNow will continue following the Commission of Inquiry into the MV Barima disaster as it develops.

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