Capitol Stormed, Suez Blocked, Myanmar Seized: A Quarter of Shocks and Their Caribbean Consequences

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review | Published 3 April 2021 | Reporting Period: 3 January – 2 April 2021

Quarterly Briefing

• Supporters of President Trump storm the US Capitol on January 6; Congress certifies the election result hours later.
• Joe Biden is inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States on January 20; US-Caribbean relations reset begins.
• Myanmar’s military seizes power in a coup on February 1, detaining civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi; mass protests follow.
• The container ship Ever Given runs aground in the Suez Canal on March 23, blocking global trade for six days and exposing supply chain fragility.
• Caribbean nations wait months behind wealthy countries in the global vaccine queue; COVAX delivers only a fraction of promised doses.
• Jamaica’s economy contracts sharply for the second consecutive year as tourism remains largely closed; the government maintains its fiscal framework.

Prologue: A Quarter of Democratic Turbulence and Supply Chain Shock

The first quarter of 2021 produced three events that individually would have dominated any normal news cycle. In January, the world’s most powerful democracy experienced an unprecedented assault on its legislative centre when a mob of supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump forced their way into the United States Capitol as Congress was certifying the result of the 2020 presidential election. In February, the world’s largest democracy-adjacent military staged a coup in Myanmar, removing the elected civilian government and triggering the largest civil resistance movement in the country’s history. And in March, a single container ship — the Ever Given — ran aground in the Suez Canal, blocked one of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoints for six days, and demonstrated with spectacular clarity how much of the global economy flows through a channel barely wider than the ship itself. For Jamaica and the Caribbean, all three events had consequences: for diplomatic alignment, for tourism market confidence, and for the supply chains that deliver imported goods to island economies.

January 6 and the US Political Reset

The storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 — as rioters broke through police lines, scaled the building’s walls, shattered windows and occupied the Senate chamber while lawmakers fled — was broadcast live around the world and produced a wave of global condemnation, including from Caribbean governments. Five people died in connection with the events. Congress reconvened that evening and certified the Electoral College vote confirming Biden’s election. Trump was subsequently impeached for the second time by the House of Representatives; the Senate ultimately acquitted him.

For Caribbean governments, the January 6 events were diplomatically significant. The United States is by far the Caribbean’s most important bilateral partner — for tourism, remittances, trade, security cooperation, development assistance and diplomatic support in multilateral forums. A United States in which democratic norms were visibly under stress was a United States whose attention, institutional capacity and policy consistency were all reduced. The Caribbean region’s relationship with Washington depends on the stability and continuity of US institutions; any episode that disrupts that stability creates ripple effects for the region. The Biden inauguration on January 20 and the new administration’s stated commitment to re-engaging multilateral institutions — including the Paris Climate Agreement, which Trump had exited — was welcomed across the Caribbean as a return to a more predictable and multilaterally oriented US foreign policy.

Myanmar: Coup and Resistance

In the early hours of 1 February 2021, Myanmar’s military — the Tatmadaw — staged a coup, detaining State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint and other elected leaders from the National League for Democracy. The military cited disputed allegations of fraud in the November 2020 elections — which the NLD had won by a landslide — and declared a one-year state of emergency. The United States, United Kingdom, European Union and most Western governments condemned the coup as an assault on democracy and imposed or threatened sanctions.

What the generals had not anticipated was the scale of popular resistance. Within days, millions of Myanmar citizens took to the streets in a Civil Disobedience Movement of extraordinary breadth: teachers, doctors, civil servants, railway workers and port staff joining strikes and demonstrations. The military responded with increasing violence: by the quarter’s end, security forces had killed hundreds of protesters and arrested thousands. The country was entering a state of protracted conflict between the military and civilian resistance forces. For the Caribbean, Myanmar’s coup was relevant primarily as a test of the international community’s commitment to democratic norms and as a further demonstration of the limits of multilateral institutions when major powers — China and Russia — protect authoritarian governments at the UN Security Council.

The Ever Given and the Fragility of Global Trade

On 23 March, the 400-metre container ship Ever Given, operated by Evergreen Marine Corporation, became wedged diagonally across the Suez Canal in the Egyptian desert during a sandstorm. The blockage halted one of the world’s most important maritime trade corridors: approximately 12 per cent of global trade passes through the Suez Canal, including significant volumes of consumer goods, manufacturing inputs and energy supplies bound for Europe and North America. Within 24 hours, more than 200 vessels had queued at both ends of the canal; shipping analysts estimated the blockage was holding up approximately $9.6 billion in trade per day.

Refloating operations succeeded on 29 March, after six days. The immediate disruption was resolved, but the episode produced lasting consequences: insurance premiums for Suez transits rose, carriers reviewed contingency routing plans, and supply chain analysts reassessed the risks of single-chokepoint dependence. For the Caribbean, which receives a significant share of its manufactured imports via routes that pass through or are affected by Suez Canal traffic patterns, the blockage caused delivery delays that added to already-elevated pandemic-era supply chain disruption. Container availability and freight rates, already elevated from pandemic-related imbalances, rose further in the weeks following the blockage.

Vaccine Inequity and the Caribbean’s Waiting Game

The most consequential geopolitical story for Jamaica and the Caribbean in Q1 2021 was not a war or a coup but the global vaccine rollout and its profound inequities. By late March, the United States had administered more than 100 million doses and was approaching one million doses per day. Israel had fully vaccinated more than half its adult population. The United Kingdom had administered more than 30 million first doses. Caribbean nations, dependent on COVAX and bilateral donations, had received and administered a fraction of what their populations needed. COVAX’s deliveries were delayed by export restrictions from India — the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, restricted exports as India’s own Delta wave began building.

For Jamaica, the vaccine gap was an economic emergency as much as a public health one. The winter 2020–21 tourism season was effectively closed. With vaccination proceeding slowly, the prospect of a fully open 2021–22 winter season — the foundation of any meaningful economic recovery — was increasingly uncertain. The government began sourcing vaccines through alternative channels, including donations of Chinese Sinopharm doses and AstraZeneca supplies from the COVAX mechanism when available. The challenge was not only supply but also vaccine confidence: significant hesitancy among sections of the population required sustained public health messaging.

Haiti’s Political Crisis Deepens

Haiti’s political crisis intensified through Q1 2021. President Jovenel Moïse was governing by presidential decree after the country’s parliament ceased to function in January 2020 for lack of elections. Moïse’s presidential term was itself disputed: the opposition argued his five-year term had begun in 2016 and should end in February 2021; Moïse and the government maintained the term had effectively begun in 2017 and would run until 2022. The dispute generated sustained protest and political deadlock. Gang violence in Port-au-Prince — particularly around the Martissant corridor — was escalating, restricting movement between the capital and southern Haiti. CARICOM maintained active diplomatic engagement with Haitian stakeholders, pressing for a negotiated political agreement that could lead to elections.

Jamaica: Managing Through the Pandemic’s Second Year

Jamaica’s economy contracted sharply for a second consecutive year in 2020–21, driven by the near-total collapse of tourism revenues that had previously contributed approximately 10 per cent of GDP and significant foreign exchange earnings. The government maintained its commitment to fiscal discipline — one of the hard-won legacies of the IMF programme years — even while spending on COVID relief and healthcare. The National Housing Trust maintained operations, and the housing market retained more activity than most sectors, partly because diaspora purchasing and essential workers’ housing needs created a floor of demand that did not entirely disappear even during lockdown periods.

Remittances from the Jamaican diaspora in North America were a critical lifeline. Despite the economic disruption in the United States and Canada, diaspora households — benefiting in some cases from expanded unemployment support and stimulus payments — maintained and in some months increased their remittance flows to Jamaica. These flows provided essential household income support for families whose members had lost employment in tourism and related services. The Bank of Jamaica kept its policy interest rate at historically low levels to support economic activity, accepting some inflation risk in exchange for maintaining credit availability.

Looking Ahead

The second quarter of 2021 opens with Caribbean vaccination still far behind source markets, the Myanmar crisis deepening into what appears to be a protracted conflict, and global supply chains still recovering from the Ever Given episode and pandemic-era disruptions. The critical question for Jamaica is whether enough of the Caribbean and its source markets will be vaccinated by the summer to allow a meaningful winter 2021–22 tourism season — without which the economic recovery will extend through another painful year. The geopolitical environment is complex but not yet producing the commodity price shocks that will define 2022. That reckoning is still ahead.

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Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review is published quarterly, examining how wars, geopolitical tensions and major international crises have shaped Jamaica, the Caribbean and their economies.

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