With the cast­ing of bal­lots now of­fi­cial­ly over in the Unit­ed States, the wait now be­gins to see who has been elect­ed pres­i­dent of the world’s most pow­er­ful na­tion.

Ka­mala Har­ris sup­port­ers at home here in Trinidad and To­ba­go high­light her In­di­an and Ja­maican her­itage, her ground-break­ing as­cen­den­cy as a for­ward-think­ing, pro­gres­sive, lib­er­al black woman to the post of vice pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, and her pro-abor­tion and same-sex union poli­cies.

For oth­ers, it’s sim­ply enough to know that she rep­re­sents the op­po­site of what they hate the most about for­mer pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, in­clud­ing his strong an­ti-im­mi­grant stance and his un­re­pen­tant Amer­i­ca-First ap­proach even at the ex­pense of in­ter­na­tion­al con­ven­tions and agree­ments.

Nonethe­less, Trump ad­mir­ers see pos­i­tives in his di­rect ap­proach as a leader who does not bow to the es­tab­lished US and glob­al sys­tems and is will­ing to take the tough de­ci­sions no mat­ter who he of­fends in the process.

At the same time, his con­ser­v­a­tive views on abor­tion and same-sex mar­riages—which counter those of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date—have al­so won him the sup­port of mod­er­ates and US-based re­li­gious bod­ies.

How­ev­er, at the end of the day, per­son­al pref­er­ences will do noth­ing to cure the many ills we face as a de­vel­op­ing coun­try—mean­ing­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion with glob­al play­ers, es­pe­cial­ly the Unit­ed States, is what is re­quired.

So, while as a re­gion we have wel­comed in­creased en­gage­ment from the Biden-Har­ris regime, most no­tably at the Ninth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as in June 2022, when Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and VP Har­ris met with re­gion­al lead­ers, much more needs to be done to turn lofty promis­es in­to ac­tion.

For in­stance, the US promised then to work with in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to de­vel­op fi­nan­cial tools that re­spond to the Caribbean’s unique chal­lenges as­so­ci­at­ed with cli­mate change and to pro­vide US$28 mil­lion in food se­cu­ri­ty as­sis­tance un­der the Caribbean Ze­ro Hunger Plan. There was al­so a promise of sup­port to stem the flow of il­le­gal weapons with­in the re­gion.

These promis­es were hearti­ly wel­comed but have been slow to man­i­fest, with T&T and the rest of the re­gion still strug­gling with the prob­lems those pro­pos­als were meant to al­le­vi­ate.

Trump, ar­guably, did not have such wide­spread en­gage­ment with the re­gion, and even when he met with a hand­ful of re­gion­al lead­ers at Mar-a-La­go in March 2019, his dan­gling of US in­vest­ments was hinged on sup­port for Juan Guai­do’s lead­er­ship in Venezuela.

His im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it re­lates to Haitians, al­so damp­ens op­ti­mism that ef­forts to pro­ceed with the poli­cies al­ready on the ta­ble would be easy.

Sim­i­lar­ly, his stance on Venezuela threat­ens T&T’s fu­ture eco­nom­ic prospects aris­ing out of the Drag­on deal. But, in the now im­mor­tal words of for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, we have to work with who­ev­er wins the elec­tion. “Who­ev­er an­swers the phone is the boss,” said Man­ning, now de­ceased, in choos­ing not to take sides af­ter late Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez was oust­ed from of­fice in an April 2002, 47-hour coup. This po­si­tion is still rel­e­vant.

Our hope is that no mat­ter who oc­cu­pies the White House, mean­ing­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion in the best in­ter­est of T&T and the rest of the Caribbean will be the or­der of the day.