ABSTRACT

This chapter presents a practitioner's view of the role that tourism is increasingly playing in US trade policy towards the Caribbean Basin. In the early days of the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI), less emphasis was placed on the importance of tourism as a means for economic development than on the need for additional investment in manufacturing activities. As appreciation in Washington grew of the region's economic strengths and weaknesses, and as US policy-makers came to understand better that tourism was one option among several for attracting investment and contributing to economic development in the Caribbean Basin, the objective became to place tourism more on a par with other economic activities and, in so far as possible, to remove any bias towards the sector that existed in development and trade policy circles.