The World Trade Centre Georgetown is at a global trade forum demanding the restoration of duty-free access for Caribbean exporters. Guyana's penalty rate is the sharpest grievance on the table.
By LCN Newsroom | Georgetown, Guyana
The World Trade Centre Georgetown is calling on the United States to restore duty-free access under CBERA for CARICOM exporters. Guyana faces a 15 percent US tariff, five points above the regional rate, as of May 2026.
The institution is making that case at the 56th Annual Global Business Forum of the World Trade Centers Association, currently in session in Philadelphia. World Trade Centre Georgetown Executive Director Wesley Kirton has raised the issue in several forum meetings, even as broader discussions at the event have focused on encouraging exporters to diversify beyond the US market. Kirton's position is direct: the tariff rates are unreasonable for a region of small island developing states, and Guyana's position within that picture is worse than its neighbours.
What is CBERA and why did Caribbean exporters depend on it?
The Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act, enacted in 1983 and made permanent in 1990, provided duty-free US market access for eligible goods from Caribbean countries for four decades.
According to the US International Trade Commission, from 2022 to 2024 the region's per capita exports of CBERA-eligible goods grew from US$297 to US$352, demonstrating that Caribbean producers were actively using the framework. It was not a legacy arrangement sitting unused. It was a functioning trade architecture built around the structural reality that small Caribbean economies cannot negotiate reciprocal trade terms with the world's largest consumer market.
The framework unravelled when the current US administration imposed sweeping tariff measures under an America First trade policy. For most of the Caribbean, that meant a 10 percent levy where there had been none. For Guyana, the initial hit was 38 percent, later reduced to 15 percent via Executive Orders. The reduction acknowledged the problem. It did not solve it.
Why does Guyana pay more than other CARICOM nations?
Guyana faces a 15 percent US tariff on exports while the rest of CARICOM pays 10 percent, a disparity stemming from Executive Orders that partially reversed a 38 percent rate imposed in April 2025.
That five-point gap matters in practice. It means a Guyanese producer selling into the US market is already five percentage points behind a Barbadian or Jamaican competitor before a single operational cost is considered. For high-volume commodity exports, that gap can erase a margin. For smaller MSME producers working on thin returns, it can close a business.
Kirton described the disparity plainly in Philadelphia: "This puts exports from Guyana at a disadvantage, and I believe that the CARICOM region would prefer a return to CBERA." He also pointed to climate vulnerability as context, noting that Guyana's low-lying coastland places it among the countries most exposed to the physical consequences of global warming, making additional economic penalties particularly difficult to absorb.
What is the World Trade Centre Georgetown and what is it doing about this?
The World Trade Centre Georgetown, opened in June 2025 as the first such centre in the CARICOM region, is advocating at the 56th Global Business Forum in Philadelphia for CBERA's restoration.
When President Ali opened the building in June 2025, the CARICOM Secretariat's Director for External Trade recognised it as a strategic leap forward for regional trade integration. Less than a year later, the institution is doing exactly what that description promised. Kirton is not in Philadelphia for a conference. He is there to make a specific argument on behalf of Caribbean commercial interests at the table that sets the terms.
The World Trade Centre Georgetown has also invited Arun Venkataraman, former head of the US Foreign Commercial Service, to lead a forthcoming Georgetown forum on tariff strategies. That appointment signals an institution that is building the expertise to sustain this advocacy beyond a single event.
Key facts at a glance:
- Guyana tariff rate: 15 percent (reduced from 38 percent in April 2025)
- CARICOM baseline tariff rate: 10 percent
- CBERA enacted: 1983, made permanent 1990
- Forum: 56th Annual WTCA Global Business Forum, Philadelphia, May 2026
- WTCG opened: June 21, 2025, Kingston, Georgetown
- CARICOM Expert Working Group report expected: before July 6 to 8 Heads of Government summit, Montego Bay
What does this mean for Caribbean MSMEs trying to export?
Caribbean small businesses that built export supply chains around CBERA now face eroded margins, higher landed costs for US buyers, and a structural tariff disadvantage that the World Trade Centre Georgetown is pushing to reverse.
According to the CARICOM Secretariat, CARICOM exports to the United States grew by 86 percent between 2023 and 2024, reaching US$34.7 billion overall. That growth happened while the preferential framework was still in place. The question now is whether Caribbean producers can sustain that trajectory under a tariff regime that adds cost at every point of sale.
For Caribbean small businesses, the tariff hit lands on top of existing export barriers. Caribbean agro-processors are already navigating strict international standards to get goods into export markets. Adding a 15 percent tariff disadvantage relative to regional competitors compounds a burden that MSME exporters were already carrying before Washington changed the rules.
According to the US International Trade Commission, CBERA had minimal effect on the US economy while delivering measurable positive benefits to Caribbean beneficiary countries. The case for restoration is asymmetric in the Caribbean's favour: small cost to restore, significant cost to leave in place.
What is the broader Caribbean trade outlook?
Despite tariff headwinds, CARICOM exports grew 32 percent between 2023 and 2024, reaching US$34.7 billion, with exports to the United States rising 86 percent in the same period.
CARICOM is responding at the institutional level. An Expert Working Group drawn from the CARICOM Secretariat, the CARICOM Private Sector Organisation and the Caribbean Development Bank is reviewing the full impact of the tariff changes, with findings expected before the Heads of Government summit in Montego Bay, Jamaica in July 2026. The group's work will inform the region's negotiating posture going forward.
Market diversification is part of that posture. CARICOM's revised common external tariff and rules of origin frameworks, implemented in January 2026, are designed to support regional producers connecting to markets beyond the United States. Guyana's rapid economic expansion is already attracting international capital, and that investment environment depends in part on trade access that is predictable and rules-based. Undermining CBERA disrupts not just existing exporters but the broader commercial confidence the region is working to build.
Diversification and restoration are not competing strategies. They are both necessary. What the World Trade Centre Georgetown is doing in Philadelphia is the near-term half of that equation: keeping the US market accessible while the region builds new ones.