The current tensions between Trinidad and Tobago and CARICOM are not simply signs of regional failure. They raise a deeper question: does the political and economic bargain forged in the 1970s still reflect the interests of Caribbean states today? This essay examines the national interests, inequalities and changing development strategies reshaping regional integration.

Development reports often present the Caribbean’s challenges as technical problems requiring more investment, exports, integration and resilience. But what disappears when history and power are removed from the diagnosis? This essay asks whether familiar policy prescriptions can transform economies shaped by extraction or whether they simply help us manage the same structures until the next report is published.