After Friday’s US Tariffs, Barbados Needs to Look North

On Friday, July 24, 2026, new US tariffs took effect on 60 trading partners under Section 301 of the Trade Act, part of the Trump administration’s forced labor enforcement action. The rates run 10% to 12.5%. The Bahamas, Guyana and the Dominican Republic were placed in the 12.5% bracket. Trinidad and Tobago landed in the 10% bracket, the same rate applied to Canada, the UK, Mexico and India. (Source: News Americas, Source: TTT News)

No CARICOM country was exempt. Trinidad’s government negotiated its way into the lowest bracket, but that is still a 10% cost added to every dollar of exports moving into the US market.

Barbados isn’t on this particular list, but that isn’t the point. The point is the pattern. The US has used IEEPA emergency powers, then Section 122 temporary tariffs, and now Section 301, cycling through legal authorities to keep tariff leverage in play even after the Supreme Court struck down the first version. (Source: IndexBox) For a small, export-dependent economy, that is not a market you want to be over-concentrated in.

The case for Canada, and where it gets tested

Canada and CARICOM have a preferential trade arrangement most Caribbean exporters underuse. Under CARIBCAN, roughly 96% to 97% of goods from 18 Commonwealth Caribbean countries and territories enter Canada duty free. (Source: Global Affairs Canada) The World Trade Organization has approved the arrangement’s extension out to 2033, and in 2025 Canada expanded the program to finally cover textiles and apparel, categories that used to be excluded. (Source: Wikipedia, CARIBCAN)

Barbados specifically already has a track record here. Regional research on Canada-CARICOM trade notes that Barbados dominates the region’s exports of commercial services to Canada. (Source: ILO) That is a real, existing foothold, not a cold start.

Here’s the balanced part, because the case for Canada isn’t automatic upside.

Trade flows have stayed modest. A 2025 policy brief from the Canada Caribbean Institute is blunt about it: despite CARIBCAN preferences, trade flows between Canada and CARICOM remain modest, preference utilization is low, and CARICOM now runs a merchandise trade deficit with Canada rather than the surplus it once had. (Source: Canada Caribbean Institute) The access exists. Most exporters aren’t using it well.

Canada isn’t immune to US trade policy either. Canada was hit with the same 10% Section 301 tariff on July 24, and separately, Trump signed proclamations imposing an additional 50% duty on a broad range of Canadian goods effective August 19, 2026. (Source: Zonos Trade Tracker) None of that touches Caribbean-Canada trade directly, but it says something about how fast US trade posture can shift for any partner, including the one you’re pivoting toward. Diversification reduces exposure; it doesn’t eliminate risk.

A reciprocal FTA still doesn’t exist. CARIBCAN is non-reciprocal and has been operating on WTO waivers and extensions since 1986. Seven rounds of Canada-CARICOM FTA talks since 2007 haven’t produced a replacement agreement. (Source: IADB) The preferential access is durable through 2033, but it is not the same as a binding, negotiated bilateral deal.

None of this makes Canada a bad option. It makes Canada an underused one, which is arguably the more useful finding. The access is already there. The rules of origin, the compliance requirements, and the logistics of actually landing product in a Canadian retail or distribution channel are where most Caribbean exporters stall out, not the tariff schedule.

Where the real work is

Duty-free entry doesn’t mean the market opens itself. Exporters still need to meet Canadian regulatory requirements, understand rules of origin thresholds, and build the operational relationships that get product onto shelves and into supply chains. This is exactly the gap between having access and using it.

That is what World Trade Commission’s Export to Canada in a Day (Barbados Cohort) is built around. It is a full day, in person workshop on September 5, 2026, at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre in Barbados, 10am to 5pm. Participants work through Canadian import requirements, labelling and allergen compliance, food safety readiness, logistics and Incoterms, and landed cost pricing, and leave with a 90 day export action plan rather than notes. Businesses that complete it also get access to test market their product in a Canadian independent store.

Register here

If you’re a Barbados or wider Caribbean business owner weighing where to put your export energy next, this is the moment to look at the Canadian market seriously, not as a backup plan, but as underused, durable access that most of your competitors aren’t using well either.