PRIME MINISTER HOLNESS: Good afternoon. It is my great pleasure to welcome United States Secretary of State, the Honorable Marco Rubio, to Jamaica. Now, I have known Secretary of State Rubio for some time, and I've always been very impressed by his deep knowledge of the region. Jamaica is deeply honored that you have chosen to visit us first on your official visit to the English-speaking Caribbean. This visit so early in your term confirms the strength of historic friendship and strategic partnership between Jamaica and the United States, one built on shared values, democratic ideals, and people-to-people ties. Our nations have long been united by a common commitment to freedom, prosperity, and security, and your visit today reaffirms this bond.
Today, we engaged in productive and constructive discussions focused on strengthening this partnership and expanding opportunities for collaboration. During our meeting, we addressed several critical areas of cooperation. Security, one major area, we reaffirmed our commitment to enhancing cooperation in combating transnational crime, ensuring the collective safety of our citizens, and mutually secured borders. We discussed a global war on gangs, and there is already significant policy alignment with both countries in this regard. The United States has been instrumental in supporting Jamaica's efforts to bolster its marine domain awareness and intelligence surveillance capabilities, which are crucial in our fight against organized criminal networks.
We discussed expanded and repurposing development assistance towards our shared goals, including security. This will exponentially expand our cooperation in fighting lottery scammers, transnational organized crime, trafficking in guns, and building safer communities. We are committed in ensuring our partnership delivers results in driving down criminality and trafficking in this hemisphere.
On Haiti, we look forward to continued partnership with the United States as we seek to work with the Haitian leadership and stakeholders to address the ongoing crises in Haiti. The extraordinary humanitarian, civil, and national security challenges in Haiti pose an acute threat to Haitians, to regional stability, and indeed to its close neighbors, including Jamaica. We agreed that we must do everything we can to stabilize the security situation in Haiti so that they are better able to build capacity and address their political and humanitarian challenges.
On trade, recognizing the United States as Jamaica's largest trading partner, with bilateral trade surpassing $3 billion in 2023, we explored avenues to further expand trade relations between our two countries. The renewal of the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act was raised as a matter of critical importance to trade for ourselves and for all CARICOM member-states.
We also explored means to attract increased U.S. investment into Jamaica's emerging sectors. With our stable macroeconomic framework and positive growth trajectory, Jamaica is open for enhanced U.S. investment across multiple sectors, including energy and nearshoring. In terms of logistics, the discussion touched on working with U.S. companies to leverage Jamaica's location as a premier transshipment hub in the Americas, and this will further bolster Jamaica's work as a major logistics hub for global trade.
On labor issues, the United States and Jamaica have enjoyed an 80-year-old history, relationship in terms of bilateral labor agreements, where we provide short-term skilled and semi-skilled labor in sectors such as agriculture and hospitality. We discussed ways to expand and enhance these agreements, including skills development partnerships to upskill and reskill Jamaican workers.
On our Travel Advisory, we discussed significant progress that we are making in bringing down all major crimes, and that Jamaica today is safer than at any time in the last two decades. In fact, crimes against visitors represent less than 0.01 percent of the more than 3 million visitors to Jamaica annually. We are committed to working collaboratively to ensure that travel advisories reflect the current realities and promote travel to Jamaica. I am confident that the dialogue initiated today will lead to tangible outcomes benefiting both our peoples and contributing to mutual stability and prosperity.
Indeed, our concern for enhanced regional and hemispheric security and prosperity was recognized as a shared one. I wish my CARICOM colleagues who are now in Kingston productive meetings as well with the Secretary this afternoon. Jamaica remains committed to fostering a partnership with the United States, one grounded in mutual respect, shared values, and a collective ambition for a stronger and a more resilient future.
I extend my sincere gratitude to Secretary Rubio and his delegation for their visit and for the productive and forward-looking discussions we have had. We look forward to building upon this foundation, deepening our collaboration, and taking our partnership to new and greater heights for the lasting benefit of both our nations.
Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you very much for joining us, and I now give the floor to —
SECRETARY RUBIO: Thank you.
PRIME MINISTER HOLNESS: — Secretary Rubio for his press statement.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, Mr. Prime Minister, first of all, thank you for the very warm welcome. On Tuesday was - I completed my ninth week on the job. So I told you I'd be here early; I think that's pretty early. And I'm glad to be here so soon. Thank you to the foreign minister as well for welcoming me, and all the work we do together, and to the people of Jamaica.
The ties, I would say, between the United States and Jamaica don't need to be explained. They're incredibly strong. And in particular, my home state of Florida, we were commenting close to - 800,000 to a million Jamaican expatriates who call the United States home. And I asked, was that just in Florida? (Laughter.) Because a very vibrant community that's contributed so much to the place that I've called home for so long.
And so we have a shared history that's tied together by people. I also would say that some substantial percentage of Americans have traveled here at some point in their lives. And that also binds countries together. Nothing binds countries and cultures more closely together than people. And we certainly have that in common, and we want to continue to make sure that we build on that.
We did touch on a couple of topics. The first is trade. The world, as has been closely followed, the President is in the midst of realigning American global trade policy, primarily to reset global trade in a way that's fair to the U.S. after 20 or 30 years of what we believe is unfairness - not when it comes to Jamaica, but broader. And from that will come real opportunities to create new alignments and new trade arrangements and new trade opportunities, and I believe Jamaica is one of those places that together we both stand to benefit.
In particular, we discussed supply chains. And we ask ourselves: Why, if so many of these products are destined for the North American market, why are so many of the productive capacities located halfway around the world? And there's a lot of different reasons why that's happened. But it makes all the sense in the world to see more productive capacity, more manufacturing, more industry, relocated into our hemisphere. We certainly have the labor and the population and the desire to do so in our hemisphere. It's closer to the end markets.
And so we want to pursue opportunities to make that possible, and clearly I think Jamaica is one of those places that could benefit; and the prime minister has that vision for the country, and the creation of not just jobs, but jobs that pay even better than the jobs that maybe some could find now. So it's an opportunity, I think, would be mutually beneficial, and we're going to actively seek and look for ways to make that possible.
I also think there's extraordinary opportunities for investment. And we talked about it, whether it's - particularly in energy. The United States is going to be producing a lot of liquefied natural gas, which is a very clean fuel that we have in abundance and that we seek to export. And it's also critical, by the way. You cannot have manufacturing without reliable and affordable energy. And so it's one of those things that I think potentially we could continue to partner on along with other things, whether it's mining opportunities off the seabed - in essence, to utilize all of the resources of the country in a responsible way that protects your environment, that protects your natural beauty, but at the same time is generating income and opportunity of employment for the people. Ultimately, that's - governments have two prime responsibilities: the safety and prosperity of their people. And your prime minister and his government is very focused on those two priorities.
We did talk about tourism because obviously it's a significant part of your economy. And we pledged we were going to go back and re-evaluate the travel advisories as they currently stand to ensure that they do reflect the reality of the new numbers, what the numbers show. Because you've made very impressive progress in your general numbers overall when it comes to the murder rate and so forth, but in particular with those travel advisories are designed to American travelers. And I think we need to analyze that and just ensure that the status we're currently in accurately reflects the status quo and takes into account the progress you've already made this year and made last year, year over year, which I think is one of the highest numbers in terms of reductions that we've seen of any country in the region.
We have to talk about security, and I think that the prime minister has phrased it in a way that I think is very beneficial, and that is - he used the term "global war on gangs." Maybe we'll find some other phraseology in the United States to describe it, but we're talking about the same problem. It's amazing, if you look across the region - and really, many parts of the world - how many of the threats we face in the world now that once came from a ideological terrorist organization or from a nation state, are now coming from non-governmental criminal organizations, who in some cases are more powerful than the governments in some of these countries. And we've confronted this issue. It's a challenge in Mexico. It's a challenge on the border between Venezuela and Colombia. It is the challenge in Haiti, and it's been a challenge here. And it's a multifaceted challenge. They are transnational for a number of reasons. One, as an example, is - and we've acknowledged this in our conversations that lead back to my time in the United States Senate - how many of the guns and the weapons that are being used by gangs to commit acts of violence here in Jamaica are purchased in the United States and then shipped here. And we want to commit to doing more to stopping that flow at the same time as we do more to commit to increasing your capacity. That's the other thing I underlined.
What we're talking about here when we talk about American assistance is America helping Jamaica build its own capacity, its own ability to confront these challenges and solve these problems because security is a baseline for everything. And to that end, we have some good things to announce today here.
We've - the JOLT Fusion Center that is starting up again, and that's been even further strengthened. That's going to help address lottery scamming. We can announce this synthetics detection equipment for Jamaica's forensic labs; another counter-gang recruitment program that we seek to launch as a result of our visit here today; and announce something that I think is really important, and that is software, intelligent software, for the law enforcement here in Jamaica to combat gangs - things like night vision goggles as well, technology. And we look to do more. And on that end, let me touch on a topic that we talked about just a little bit. Well, I'll touch on what the topic - then I'll get to this final one.
On - you mentioned upskilling and helping, how can we - it's a topic we hadn't touched on directly extensively before. We talked about it today. We seek to go back and find ways that we can partner to create opportunities for skills training so that if those companies - and we can attract those companies if we can attract - whether it's a logistics center or manufacturing - to come to Jamaica. There's a workforce that's been equipped with the skills needed.
Now, we face this challenge domestically as well. We need to do that ourselves. But there may be things that we can do in collaboration with one another. And this touches on the issue of aid - very controversial in the United States, but it's one of the reasons why I wanted to come here today because it in many ways highlights exactly what our vision for aid moving forward is.
The United States is not getting out of the aid business. We are going to be providing foreign aid. The difference is we want to provide foreign aid in a way that is strategically aligned with our foreign policy priorities and the priorities of our host countries and our nation states that we're partners with. In essence, how that would work, how it has worked in the past, is USAID or some other entity would come into a country and say, this is what we think you need. And then they go out and hire an NGO that maybe are the ones that convinced them that that's what you need, and they give them a bunch of money and they come into the country and they do things. Some of these programs are fine. They're nice things. Other times, not so much. Nonetheless, that's how it used to be.
How we want it to be in the future is that our embassies are involved with the host government, our hosts, the - our partners. And we ask them, what are your needs? And we provide assistance geared towards the needs of the nation states that are hosting us and that we're partnering with. At the end, our partner in Jamaica, our partner all over the world, is the government. It's the host government, who have a clear vision for the future. And to the extent that our foreign aid can be helpful, it is in furtherance of what the people of your country have elected you to carry out.
Here there are a lot of things. We've just described some of them. What should our foreign aid be geared towards? It should be geared towards looking for opportunities to increase skills training, looking for opportunities to attract investment and business and trade, and looking, obviously, for opportunities to expand on your own domestic intelligence capabilities. We are going to have foreign aid that is aligned to our foreign policy, and our foreign policy is going to be aligned to our mutual shared interests with the partners that we have all over the world.
And I can tell you, Jamaica's an incredible partner to the United States. It's very cooperative on a number of fronts. And we will continue to work together, and we're going to work closer than we've ever worked before because we are now going to have U.S. programs for foreign aid that are going to be aligned with the vision that you've elected your leaders to carry out for your country. And that benefits us both.
And so I thank you for the opportunity to visit with you here today and talk about these things. I'm excited that we're going to be able to follow up on a lot of them and show real progress. The message that I've wanted to send in my travels - I've had to travel a couple of other places, but I've been to the hemisphere now twice - is very simple, and that is that the United States wants to ensure that when countries are cooperative and work with us and partner with us and constantly seek ways to engage us, that that leads to positive results and outcomes.
We - it's not - you can call it rewarding, but what it really means is it has to be a mutually beneficial relationship. And we want countries in the world, and we want countries in the region, to identify being close to the United States as something that is beneficial and helpful - helpful to develop, helpful to grow, and frankly helpful so that one day many countries can serve - and I think - and Jamaica is already doing this - as a model of what other countries would seek to emulate, whether it's on security, on trade, on investment, on skills acquisition and improvement. These are the things that we want America - relationship with our partners to look like. And I can think of no better friend in the Caribbean and frankly in the Western Hemisphere than Jamaica and your government, Mr. Prime Minister.
And so we thank you for this chance to visit with you so early. And as I joked a couple times, but I'll say it again - I think I told it to the cameras already - I wanted to come here early so when I come for the second and third time, they don't accuse me of only wanting to go to Jamaica. (Laughter.) And - but in many ways, it really truly feels like home and - where I am in South Florida, and I thank you for your hospitality and this opportunity. (Applause.)
