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Friday, February 21, 2025

‘We don’t need them …’ Donald Trump 2025 01 20

by

Mariano Browne
26 days ago
20250126
Economist Marino Browne

Economist Marino Browne

Nicole Drayton

Don­ald Trump’s first day as Pres­i­dent marked a piv­otal mo­ment for the USA and the world and raised sig­nif­i­cant ques­tions about the chal­lenges and op­por­tu­ni­ties ahead. He signed 26 ex­ec­u­tive or­ders and is­sued many procla­ma­tions and mem­o­ran­da to “se­cure” Amer­i­can bor­ders, “un­leash” Amer­i­can en­er­gy, and end di­ver­si­ty schemes, among oth­er things, thus sig­nalling his in­tent to ac­com­plish much.

He al­so par­doned the ri­ot­ers charged for the Jan­u­ary 6 as­sault on the US Capi­tol, a move that un­der­mined the jus­tice sys­tem. The New Times la­belled his ap­proach a “mus­cu­lar vi­sion of pres­i­den­tial pow­er” (A20, NYT Jan­u­ary 23).

Af­ter sign­ing the ex­ec­u­tive or­ders, Trump was asked about re­la­tions with Latin Amer­i­ca and Brazil and said the re­la­tion­ship “should be great.” But he made it clear who was the dom­i­nant part­ner in that re­la­tion­ship.

“They need us much more than we need them. We don’t need them,” he said. “They need us. Every­body needs us.” In­deed, his ad­dress con­tained no men­tion of al­lies, Ukraine, or cli­mate change.

Par­tic­i­pa­tion in the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion and the Paris Cli­mate was sev­ered. Which oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies are the next tar­gets? The In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court of Jus­tice? If every­body needs Amer­i­ca, that im­plies that there is on­ly one win­ner, and every coun­try is a los­er. From this van­tage point, for­eign and do­mes­tic poli­cies will be close­ly aligned.

Pres­i­dent Trump’s false as­ser­tion that Chi­na runs the Pana­ma Canal to the detri­ment of US ship­ping in­ter­ests and his com­ment, “…we’re tak­ing it back,” sig­nal an in­ter­ven­tion­ist po­si­tion.

Bei­jing dis­missed the al­le­ga­tion. The Pana­ma Canal is op­er­at­ed by the Pana­ma Canal Au­thor­i­ty, an agency of the Pana­man­ian Gov­ern­ment, not Chi­nese sol­diers. Chi­na is the sec­ond largest user of the canal af­ter the Unit­ed States, and Chi­nese com­pa­nies have in­deed in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in ports and ter­mi­nals near the canal.

Two of the five ports ad­ja­cent to the canal, Bal­boa and Cristóbal, on the Pa­cif­ic and At­lantic sides, re­spec­tive­ly, have been op­er­at­ed by a sub­sidiary of CK Hutchi­son Port Hold­ings since 1997. CK Hutchi­son Hold­ings is a pub­licly trad­ed Hong Kong-based con­glom­er­ate found­ed by Hong Kong busi­ness­man Li Ka-shing.

Chi­na and Rus­sia have made sig­nif­i­cant ad­vances in Latin Amer­i­ca over the past decade by pro­vid­ing se­cu­ri­ty part­ner­ships with left-lean­ing coun­tries like Cu­ba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

Through its “Belt and Road” ini­tia­tive, Chi­na has fi­nanced ma­jor in­fra­struc­tur­al projects in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, in­clud­ing deep-wa­ter har­bours. Fur­ther, Rus­sia and Chi­na have en­er­gy con­ces­sions that bor­der the Drag­on Gas field, the field for which T&T has a pro­duc­tion and ex­plo­ration li­cence.

In his ad­dress to glob­al busi­ness and po­lit­i­cal lead­ers at the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum on Jan­u­ary 23, Pres­i­dent Trump said, “… One thing we’re go­ing to be de­mand­ing is re­spect from oth­er na­tions.” He al­so warned that they would face tar­iffs if they do not man­u­fac­ture in the US.

These first few com­ments con­firm that his speech­es on the hus­tings were not dis­card­able ex­ag­ger­a­tions in the heat of an elec­tion cam­paign. They are aligned with the plat­form rhetoric of “Amer­i­ca First!”

Adding to the grav­i­ty of those com­ments, Sen­a­tor Mar­co Ru­bio was con­firmed as Sec­re­tary of State. He is con­sid­ered one of Con­gress’s most hawk­ish mem­bers con­cern­ing Chi­na and Cu­ba and has been de­scribed as “Cu­ba’s worst night­mare” as a prin­ci­pal an­tag­o­nist in the Sen­ate.

Suc­ces­sive US pres­i­dents have pro­hib­it­ed trade and im­ple­ment­ed trav­el re­stric­tions with Cu­ba, and the few at­tempts over many ad­min­is­tra­tions to “thaw” the re­la­tion­ship with Cu­ba have failed. The US trade em­bar­go on Cu­ba has last­ed more than 60 years.

Sen­a­tor Ru­bio was amongst the most vo­cal crit­ics of the Oba­ma ad­min­is­tra­tion’s at­tempt to re-es­tab­lish full diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with Cu­ba. Venezuela has been one of Cu­ba’s clos­est al­lies and has con­tin­ued to sup­ply Cu­ba with fu­el. How will Trump and Ru­bio ap­proach the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion’s con­ces­sions to Venezuela and, by ex­ten­sion, T&T?

The USA is a great pow­er in the game of great pow­er pol­i­tics, whilst T&T is a small de­vel­op­ing coun­try in a world where in­ter­na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions have less clout. Pres­i­dent Trump’s open­ing mes­sages in­di­cate that the USA main­tains its im­pe­r­i­al de­signs on the re­gion. There­fore, T&T’s first chal­lenge is to be clear about our ob­jec­tives and how best they could be achieved in an un­cer­tain glob­al en­vi­ron­ment.

How do we en­gage with the US su­per­pow­er while main­tain­ing a mea­sure of our in­de­pen­dence to pur­sue our re­la­tion­ship with the Chi­nese and the BRICS? There are ob­vi­ous ar­eas of co­op­er­a­tion with the US. Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, curb­ing the drug trade, and mon­ey laun­der­ing are key ar­eas of mu­tu­al in­ter­est.

The mi­gra­tion is­sue will cause some fric­tion. Since 1960, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300,000 peo­ple have em­i­grat­ed from T&T to the USA, the ma­jor­i­ty of whom were le­gal mi­grants. The US de­por­ta­tion of il­le­gal im­mi­grants will cause some fric­tion and so­cial dis­lo­ca­tion.

The key is­sues are our re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela, ac­cess to the Drag­on Gas field, and oth­er trad­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties with Venezuela. The OFAC li­cences will ex­pire in Oc­to­ber of this year. US sanc­tions against Venezuela may be in­creased, thus hurt­ing any chance of ac­cess­ing Venezue­lan gas.

These are ear­ly days. A less hawk­ish, more rea­son­able ap­proach to Venezuela may come. Whether that hap­pens or not, T&T must con­sid­er its op­tions more wise­ly and wide­ly.

Mar­i­ano Browne is the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness.


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