The Caribbean is of­ten re­ferred to as the third bor­der of the Unit­ed States, so, un­sur­pris­ing­ly, Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio is em­bark­ing on a three-na­tion tour of the re­gion start­ing to­mor­row.

Ja­maica is the first stop on this trip, which will al­so take Ru­bio to Guyana and Suri­name. Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, on his first over­seas as­sign­ment since tak­ing over from Dr Kei­th Row­ley, is among the re­gion­al lead­ers who will hold bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions with the chief diplo­mat­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

US for­eign pol­i­cy and its ef­fect on T&T and the wider re­gion is ex­pect­ed to be in fo­cus, but for this na­tion, the is­sue that looms large will be the Drag­on gas deal with Venezuela, which has been mired in un­cer­tain­ty ever since Trump took of­fice.

As En­er­gy Min­is­ter, Young has been at the fore­front of ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezuela’s Nico­las Maduro regime to get that deal off the ground. There­fore, he can pro­vide in­sight in­to the pro­posed arrange­ment dur­ing his talks with Ru­bio.

How­ev­er, with Venezuela—and any coun­try that buys its oil—the sub­ject of the lat­est tar­iff threats from the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, it will take some diplo­mat­ic skill on the part of Young and his del­e­ga­tion to save the Drag­on deal.

Still, Ru­bio’s planned stops in Guyana and Suri­name, where there have been mas­sive oil dis­cov­er­ies in re­cent years, sug­gest that en­er­gy is a pri­or­i­ty is­sue for the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The talks be­tween Young and Ru­bio are tak­ing place at a crit­i­cal time in T&T’s long­stand­ing re­la­tion­ship with the US, which, al­though de­scribed as cor­dial, is like­ly to be test­ed by many of the poli­cies be­ing im­posed by the Trump regime.

There have been marked shifts in the US stance on sev­er­al is­sues that di­rect­ly af­fect T&T and oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion.

Last month, Ru­bio an­nounced that any coun­try par­tic­i­pat­ing in Cu­ba’s med­ical mis­sions, which de­ploy nurs­es and doc­tors to sev­er­al coun­tries in the re­gion, risks hav­ing the US visas of their of­fi­cials can­celled.

Be­fore he stepped down as prime min­is­ter, Dr Row­ley was among the Cari­com lead­ers who said they were pre­pared to lose their visas, not­ing that the Cuban medics per­formed a vi­tal role in the health sec­tors of many Cari­com coun­tries.

Oth­er ac­tions by the new US ad­min­is­tra­tion that are cause for con­cern in the Caribbean are US freezes on for­eign aid, pulling out of glob­al com­mit­ments on cli­mate change, the ramped-up de­por­ta­tion pol­i­cy and the threat of trav­el bans.

Even with these con­cerns, re­gion­al lead­ers should take com­fort in the fact that Ru­bio’s vis­it comes a mere two months af­ter the new Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion took of­fice in the Unit­ed States. It sug­gests that the US gov­ern­ment sees val­ue in main­tain­ing close ties with the Caribbean.

Young isn’t the on­ly re­gion­al leader head­ing to Ja­maica for talks with the US Sec­re­tary of State, but he is the one with plen­ty to prove, par­tic­u­lar­ly with his pledge to en­gage in di­a­logue with high-lev­el US of­fi­cials for the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple of T&T.

With Drag­on gas hang­ing in the bal­ance, these talks could de­fine the na­ture of bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions with the new US regime.

Let’s see how the new PM fares in this test of his for­eign re­la­tions acu­men.