UN General Assembly
2018

Fifteen years after winning an arbitration at the WTO, my little country is still awaiting an acceptable settlement by the United States to honour its obligation to us. That is right — 15 years later we are still waiting. The United States economy is 20,000 times larger than that of Antigua and Barbuda. The compensation for the injury to my small country is less than 0.008 per cent of one year of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States. The injury that was done to my country’s economy now amounts to over 20 per cent of its GDP. No country can easily absorb that severe a blow, which hurts our economy, sets back our infrastructural development and constrains the provision of employment and advances in health and education. That my people have been able to survive that pain speaks to their resilience, of which I am extremely proud, but they should not be made to endure it.