The Tribune

By midnight, boats that have been fixed up, fuelled up and loaded with food and supplies for the next several days will be seconds away from the silent starting gun. Owners and crew will toss lines onto the dock or up anchor and rev up if they are not already in position. The magic moment – 12:01 am, the official start to crawfish season and Bahamians by the hundreds will head out to their favourite spot to begin the annual ritual of spearing the Bahamian version of lobster. They’ll hunt for them hidden deep in crevices of coral reefs, in downed airplane wrecks, beneath abandoned underwater jetsam and flotsam that have been offering safe zones until this moment, the minute the clock strikes go – and the crowds do.

For some, crawfishing is a sport, its consumption a delicacy. For others, the search, spear, sort, pack and export is their livelihood. And for them, the year 2026 will not be like all other years. This year, the American president has imposed a 12.5 percent tariff on exports from countries that do business with countries that use forced labour, which most folks interpret as meaning China, though exports are also being taxed on imports from China which remains America’s third largest trading partner.

In mighty good company

The Bahamas is not alone – we are in some of the finest company in the world, including America’s top two trading partners, Mexico and Canada, along with Australia, India, the UK, members of the European Union, even Norway and, of course, China. While the shadow of hefty tariffs hangs over the export businesses of every size – tariffs that could still be reduced in scope or ruled illegal altogether and shot down by the courts –it is important that we in The Bahamas do not lost sight of one very important fact:

America remains the best international friend The Bahamas has ever had.

Best friend

The US has always been by The Bahamas’ side, even when we were being very, very naughty, happily and readily supplying the drugs the US market wanted, but that aside, America has been the partner we needed and depended upon through thick and thin.

They’ve just been lousy about telling their story. And it’s about time that somebody tells it. I can assure you that I do not want to be accused of being a Trump apologist. Lawd knows, he’s got a highly paid team for that kind of pr and I am most definitely not part of that team. Truth is, I am far more interested in tasting the first bite of crawfish for the season and it was the crawfish tax, as I called it, that got me thinking about what kind of friend America is if they wanted an innocent fisherman from Long Island or Spanish Wells to pay the price for China policy.

This has been a long time coming.

I first became seriously curious about how often the US is called on to assist when I received a call from the American Embassy asking who I knew who would send aircraft to the southern islands to evacuate Bahamians in the face of Hurricane Melissa. The Embassy in Nassau was assisting, as always, with the Bahamian government’s rescue.

Interesting findings

What I found was one demonstration after another of partnership.

When Hurricane Dorian struck The Bahamas in 2019, devastating Abaco and Grand Bahama, taking untold numbers of lives and uprooting thousands of survivors, the United States poured more than $34 million into direct disaster relief. The home country where we shop and that gives us much of our music and fashion taste became the shoulder we leaned on and was by far, the largest international donor when our arms were outstretched and our hearts were broken.

Six years later, it was Hurricane Melissa and though causing nowhere near the impact of Dorian, the Embassy heard and responded, this time with $500,000 in life-saving emergency assistance for recovery purposes.

In random order, here are just a few other examples:

$500,000 from Ambassador Herschel Walker to the Bahamas Red Cross when his feet had barely touched the ground;

$245,000 to Ministry of Culture, Arts & Heritage announced earlier this month for the restoration of Fort Montagu, the only fort that linked American and Bahamian conflict;

Through EXIM, lending support to FOCOL for LNG funding that led to what was called the “deal of the year”;

US Northern Command donation of services and supplies including fire trailers and broad collaboration with AUTEC, including $60,000 in supplies to schools in Andros;

What we don’t see in dollars is just as important – leveraging know-how and who they know to foster investment in The Bahamas, including the $50 million American investment that created the Western Atlantic University School of Medicine in Grand Bahama that has created 200 Bahamian jobs.

The Embassy has also lent strong support to the development of the Grand Bahama Shipyard which is now capable of handling the largest ships in the world.

As recently as yesterday, the Embassy was conducting intensive crisis management seminars and workshops for Bahamian agencies, particularly those connected with disaster management and relief.

It continues to run OPBAT efforts with a 24/7 watch over the islands and Caribbean to monitor for human trafficking and illegal contraband. We don’t stop to think about it but OPBAT monitors 100,000 square miles of our waters alone and the 3,000 small craft that traverse the waters daily.

One thing we do think about – the privilege of LPIA pre-clearance. That’s when most of us, you and I and the hundreds in line in front and behind us, truly appreciate the United States, and could not care less which party is spending the holidays in the White House this year. We are focused on going on holiday to our favourite place, the United States of America, and a tariff (that might be shot down by the courts) is the last thing on our mind. Disneyworld waits, the kids are eager, we want a break from the island and the neighbour to our immediate north is only a half hour away. We can’t wait to land in those welcoming arms, the ones that belong to the best friend The Bahamas ever had, the one we count on in good times and bad, the same one that needs to do a better job telling its story so when the out-of-character moment like a tariff comes along, we may not like it or understand it, but we swallow and accept it – for now. We know one thing. In the long view, we couldn’t ask for a better friend than the United States of America.