Kari Lake, President Donald Trump's nominee for United States Ambassador to Jamaica, has promised to take on lottery scammers, drug traffickers, and China's growing footprint in the Caribbean if the Senate confirms her.
Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, Lake laid out four main priorities. Topping the list: security cooperation with Kingston and strategic competition with Beijing.
"Jamaica is also a key security partner," Lake told senators, pointing to the island's role in regional anti-narcotics work and broader law enforcement collaboration.
She said she'd work closely with the Jamaican government to dismantle transnational criminal organisations, disrupt drug networks, and go after lottery-scamming operations that target Americans.
Lake also delivered a blunt warning about China's expanding economic presence in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean. Beijing's investments in ports, infrastructure, and other critical sectors carry long-term strategic risks for the United States, she argued.
"Countering China's growing economic influence less than 500 miles from our shores" would be one of her main goals, she told the committee.
According to Lake, the Chinese Communist Party's investments across the region go beyond economics and touch national security.
"In a region this close to the United States, those efforts aren't just economic, they're strategic."
She added that she'd work to ensure Jamaica chooses "transparency, sovereignty, and partnership with the United States" instead of dependence on countries whose interests don't align with Washington's.
On trade, Lake noted that bilateral goods trade exceeded US$3 billion in 2025, making Jamaica one of America's largest Caribbean trading partners. Americans make up more than 70% of visitors to the island, and thousands of Jamaicans work annually on US farms and businesses across more than 35 states.
One specific trade issue she raised: Jamaica's long-standing restriction on US pork exports. She said she'd push to resolve that while encouraging more American investment in Jamaica.
Lake also stressed the need for disaster preparedness and hurricane resilience as Jamaica enters another storm season after severe hurricanes in recent years. Protecting the tens of thousands of Americans living in Jamaica and the roughly two million US citizens who visit each year would be a core embassy responsibility, she said.
To show her personal connection, Lake told senators she's visited Jamaica many times over the past 35 years and honeymooned there with her husband.
"Yes, Jamaica has beautiful beaches, but it's the incredible Jamaican people whose warmth, resilience, and deep pride in their country that kept us going back."
If confirmed, Lake would take over the US Embassy in Kingston at a time when security, migration, trade, and geopolitical competition are shaping US engagement in the region. Her nomination comes more than a year after former ambassador N. Nick Perry — a Jamaican-born American politician who served from 2022 to January 2025 — left the post.
Lake is a former television journalist and a vocal Trump ally. She ran for governor of Arizona in 2022 and lost, then unsuccessfully ran for the US Senate in 2024. Her nomination has drawn scrutiny given her history of spreading election fraud claims, but the Senate committee hearing focused squarely on Jamaica policy.