“You Have No Cards — Not Even the Box the Cards Came In”: MP Trevor Walker Speaks Frankly about the Government’s Leverage with Washington

Barbuda MP Trevor Walker stood alone on the opposition benches on Tuesday and said what no one on the government side was willing to acknowledge — that Antigua and Barbuda holds no negotiating leverage whatsoever over the United States on the third-country deportees issue, and that the Prime Minister’s posturing as a tough negotiator is a performance without substance.

“You don’t have no cards,” MP Walker told the House, directly addressing the Prime Minister and the government benches. “I beg your pardon. You have no cards. You’re begging the United States to accept some position because you have no cards. That is what it is.”

The statement provoked visible displeasure from government members, but MP Walker would not yield. He repeated the phrase throughout his contribution — at least eight times — each time reinforcing the central argument that the government’s presentation of itself as standing firm against a superpower is a fiction the country cannot afford to indulge.

Why There Are No Cards

MP Walker did not simply assert the point. He built the case methodically, drawing on the current state of US-Antigua relations and the lived experience of ordinary Antiguans and Barbudans to demonstrate that the country’s negotiating position is, in practical terms, non-existent.

He began with the visa restrictions. Antigua and Barbuda and Dominica are currently subject to the most stringent visa measures applied to any Caribbean nation by the United States — measures that were in place before the deportee issue even arose. “So my question would be: if you’re placing this position, what is our proposed reciprocal arrangement? What is it?” MP Walker asked. The government offered no answer.

MP Walker then illustrated what the restrictions mean in human terms. He described arriving at Miami immigration after the April election, where an officer told him bluntly: “Sir, Antiguans and Barbudans are allowed a maximum of 30 days [in the US], no more.” He recounted the case of a businesswoman he knows personally — financially independent, supporting her son at a private American university — who applied for a visa and was denied. She now cannot visit her own child.

“I mentioned all these things just to show where we are,” MP Walker said.

The Comparison That Exposed the Posturing

The MP for Barbuda invoked one of the most public display of power asymmetry the world has recently witnessed to frame Antigua and Barbuda’s position. “I want to say to you, Mr. Speaker, the same thing that Donald Trump said to President Zelensky in the Oval Office: Antigua and Barbuda, you don’t have no cards. Watch your cards. Where your cards? Where your cards? You have no cards.”

The comparison was pointed. If the President of Ukraine — a nation at war, with a military of hundreds of thousands, receiving billions in Western support — was told to his face in the oval office that he held no cards. What does a twin-island nation of 100,000 people with no military, no strategic resources, and a small economy imagine it is holding?

MP Walker pressed the logic further. “I’m listening to you,” he said, addressing the Prime Minister’s earlier remarks about demanding US$75,000 per deportee. “You’re speaking as if, oh, I might accept 75,000 [US dollars] per person. You have no cards.”

“Not Even the Box the Cards Came In”

MP Walker extended the metaphor to the wider Caribbean’s failure to negotiate collectively. He noted that CARICOM leaders had just concluded a Heads of Government meeting without producing a unified position on the deportee issue — each country opting to negotiate individually with Washington instead.

“Here you are, these small two-by-four countries, trying to be macho — some of them trying to be macho — without cards, or even the box that the cards came in, putting our people in a precarious situation,” he said.

The point was not merely rhetorical. A unified CARICOM position — with member states negotiating as a bloc — would at least have given the Caribbean some collective weight. Individual negotiations between Washington and micro states produce exactly the outcome MP Walker described: small states begging a superpower for terms, with no leverage to enforce any of them.

What Having No Cards Actually Means

MP Walker’s argument was not a counsel of despair. It was a demand for honesty. He explicitly stated that he was not calling for Antigua to capitulate — “Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying” — but rather that the government must stop pretending to the public that it is negotiating from a position of strength when every observable fact points to the opposite.

Having no cards means telling the people the truth about why relations with the United States deteriorated in the first place. Having no cards means consulting widely — with civil society, the bar association, the chamber of commerce, and the public — before going to Parliament. Having no cards means working with CARICOM to build collective leverage rather than posturing alone. And having no cards means acknowledging that whatever agreement emerges will be on Washington’s terms, not St. John’s — and preparing the country accordingly.

“Antiguans and Barbudans deserve better than this,” MP Walker said. “Coming to this Parliament without any sort of town hall meeting, any involvement, interaction with anybody else — and this is what it’s about.”

The resolution passed with the government’s majority. The cards — or the absence of them — remain exactly where MP Trevor Walker said they were — in Washington.