By Dr Mar­garet Rose

The old north Eu­ro­pean lan­guages had a word for the sci­ence of gov­ern­ment, state­craft, which is the art and dis­ci­pline of build­ing, run­ning, and adapt­ing the state.

In our mod­ern vo­cab­u­lary, we have nar­rowed state­craft to mean diplo­ma­cy and for­eign af­fairs, for­get­ting that every act of gov­er­nance is an act of state­craft. Nowhere is this truer than in pub­lic pro­cure­ment. When gov­ern­ments spend (and glob­al­ly they spend ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$13 tril­lion an­nu­al­ly) they are not mere­ly pur­chas­ing goods and ser­vices. They are prac­tis­ing state­craft: shap­ing economies, nur­tur­ing in­dus­tries, ex­press­ing na­tion­al val­ues and cast­ing votes for the kind of na­tions they wish to be­come.

Last year, 2025, marked a mo­ment when the world’s ma­jor economies al­lowed the scales to fall. The pre­tence of neu­tral, tech­ni­cal, apo­lit­i­cal pub­lic pro­cure­ment as con­cep­tu­alised in the UN Mod­el Law has col­lapsed. From Wash­ing­ton to Bei­jing, from Lon­don to New Del­hi, gov­ern­ments have aban­doned the fic­tion that pur­chas­ing is sim­ply about get­ting the right goods at the right price. They have stopped dis­guis­ing what de­vel­op­ing na­tions were once told to ig­nore: pro­cure­ment is pow­er.

The great un­rav­el­ling

In March 1933, amid the Great De­pres­sion, news­pa­per mag­nate William Ran­dolph Hearst launched a ‘Buy Amer­i­can’ cam­paign. Pres­i­dent Her­bert Hoover, on his fi­nal day in of­fice, signed the Buy Amer­i­can Act in­to law. To date that leg­is­la­tion has nev­er been re­pealed, on­ly strength­ened. Nine­ty-two years lat­er, the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion raised do­mes­tic con­tent re­quire­ments to 75 per cent by 2029 and closed long­stand­ing waivers that had ex­empt­ed high­way projects from Buy Amer­i­ca rules. In 2025, Pres­i­dent Trump im­posed sweep­ing new tar­iffs and dou­bled down on ‘Amer­i­ca First’ pro­cure­ment.

And the Unit­ed States is not alone. In Feb­ru­ary 2025, the Unit­ed King­dom’s Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Act en­tered in­to force, a post-Brex­it piv­ot that ex­plic­it­ly pri­ori­tis­es ‘max­imis­ing pub­lic ben­e­fit’ over open com­pe­ti­tion.

In­dia’s De­fence Ac­qui­si­tion Pro­ce­dure places ‘Buy In­di­an, In­dige­nous­ly De­signed, De­vel­oped and Man­u­fac­tured’ at the apex of its pro­cure­ment hi­er­ar­chy, part of a broad­er self-re­liance pro­gramme that has in­creased de­fence pro­duc­tion by 60 per cent since 2019.

The Eu­ro­pean Union’s Net Ze­ro In­dus­try Act man­dates that no more than 50 per cent of cer­tain strate­gic tech­nolo­gies may orig­i­nate from any sin­gle third coun­try.

Chi­na’s re­sponse to US ex­port con­trols has been equal­ly strate­gic: the ‘Made in Chi­na 2025’ ini­tia­tive pur­sues 70 per cent semi­con­duc­tor self-suf­fi­cien­cy, with state-owned en­ter­pris­es now re­quired to re­place for­eign chips with do­mes­tic pro­cure­ment al­ter­na­tives un­der Bei­jing’s ‘se­cure and con­trol­lable’ doc­trine.

For 40 years, de­vel­op­ing na­tions were coun­selled to adopt ‘gold-stan­dard’ pro­cure­ment laws pri­ori­tis­ing open com­pe­ti­tion, rules large­ly writ­ten by, and for, in­dus­tri­alised economies. Now those same economies have aban­doned even the pre­tence of fol­low­ing their own pre­scrip­tions. These na­tions have al­ways un­der­stood that pro­cure­ment is not a back-of­fice tech­ni­cal func­tion with­in pub­lic fi­nan­cial ad­min­is­tra­tion. Pro­cure­ment is state­craft.

The Caribbean cross­fire

Where does this leave the Caribbean?

Cari­com’s pub­lic pro­cure­ment rep­re­sents ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$17 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly, sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket pow­er if co­or­di­nat­ed. Yet the events of 2025 have ex­posed fault lines threat­en­ing the very foun­da­tions of re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty.

Trinidad and To­ba­go stands at the epi­cen­tre of this frac­ture. The Drag­on gas field, sit­ting just ten miles across the mar­itime bor­der in Venezue­lan wa­ters, holds an es­ti­mat­ed 4.2 tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas. Our At­lantic LNG fa­cil­i­ty re­port­ed­ly pro­duced on­ly 8.5 mil­lion tonnes last year, (four mil­lion tonnes be­low in­stalled ca­pac­i­ty) be­cause we lack suf­fi­cient feed­stock. Drag­on was meant to be our life­line. In Oc­to­ber, af­ter months of diplo­mat­ic ma­noeu­vring, the Unit­ed States grant­ed a new, six-month OFAC li­cence per­mit­ting de­vel­op­ment.

Then came the un­rav­el­ling. The cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion aligned with Wash­ing­ton’s mil­i­tary de­ploy­ment in the south­ern Caribbean, open­ing our air­ports to US mil­i­tary air­craft and host­ing a radar in­stal­la­tion in To­ba­go.

‘Cari­com is not a re­li­able part­ner,’ the Prime Min­is­ter has de­clared. Venezuela’s re­sponse was swift: our Prime Min­is­ter was de­clared per­sona non gra­ta, and Cara­cas sus­pend­ed all nat­ur­al gas agree­ments. The Drag­on li­cence, so painstak­ing­ly se­cured, now leads nowhere.

But the dam­age ex­tends be­yond en­er­gy. An­tigua and Bar­bu­da’s Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne high­lights fig­ures that should give every Trin­bag­on­ian pause. In 2024, Trinidad and To­ba­go earned US$1.1 bil­lion from trade with Cari­com, our sec­ond-largest ex­port mar­ket. We are the on­ly mem­ber state to have main­tained a con­sis­tent trade sur­plus with the Com­mu­ni­ty since 1973. Browne as­sert­ed that Cari­com coun­tries col­lec­tive­ly sac­ri­ficed ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$142.7 mil­lion in cus­toms rev­enue last year by sourc­ing goods from TT un­der the Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff, “an eco­nom­ic sac­ri­fice borne by Caribbean con­sumers in the spir­it of re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty.”

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tive In­dus­try have both is­sued ur­gent state­ments de­scrib­ing Cari­com as ‘in­dis­pens­able’ to our eco­nom­ic re­silience. Yet even as our man­u­fac­tur­ers de­pend on re­gion­al mar­kets and our en­er­gy sec­tor des­per­ate­ly needs Venezue­lan gas, we find our­selves si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly an­tag­o­nis­ing both.

The roots of this predica­ment are bi­par­ti­san. On De­cem­ber 10, 2024, the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion signed a Sta­tus of Forces Agree­ment (SO­FA) with the Unit­ed States. The cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion em­braced and ex­pand­ed that frame­work. Ten for­mer Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing the for­mer T&T prime min­is­ter who signed the SO­FA, is­sued a joint de­c­la­ra­tion reaf­firm­ing the Caribbean as a ‘Zone of Peace.’ The irony writes it­self. But irony does not fill LNG tankers, nor does it pre­serve ex­port mar­kets.

Ques­tions we are not ask­ing

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns are re­al. Co­op­er­a­tion with the Unit­ed States on nar­co-traf­fick­ing and transna­tion­al crime is both le­git­i­mate and nec­es­sary. The ques­tion is not whether to pur­sue se­cu­ri­ty, but whether we have pur­sued it strate­gi­cal­ly.

What has been ab­sent from pub­lic dis­course, across suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions, is any co­her­ent ar­tic­u­la­tion of how se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion fits with­in a broad­er frame­work of eco­nom­ic sov­er­eign­ty. Agree­ments were signed with­out ap­par­ent con­sid­er­a­tion of their im­pli­ca­tions for en­er­gy ne­go­ti­a­tions. Re­gion­al part­ner­ships were de­clared un­re­li­able with­out cal­cu­lat­ing our de­pen­dence on re­gion­al mar­kets. Geopo­lit­i­cal align­ments were made with­out a pro­cure­ment strat­e­gy to mit­i­gate re­sult­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties.

State­craft de­mands that we recog­nise a fun­da­men­tal truth: what we buy, and who buys from us, are not sec­ondary con­sid­er­a­tions to be man­aged af­ter geopo­lit­i­cal de­ci­sions are made. They are the very sub­stance of na­tion­al re­silience.

There is still time, though per­haps not much, to craft a more in­te­grat­ed ap­proach be­tween our life­line of en­er­gy pro­cure­ment and lifeblood of re­gion­al mar­kets. A na­tion­al pro­cure­ment strat­e­gy pri­ori­tis­ing re­gion­al sourc­ing where fea­si­ble. An en­er­gy di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion plan ac­cel­er­at­ing de­vel­op­ment of our own off­shore fields. A Cari­com en­gage­ment that treats our part­ners as the US$1.1 bil­lion mar­ket they rep­re­sent. These are not rev­o­lu­tion­ary pro­pos­als. They are the ba­sic el­e­ments of strate­gic state­craft that more in­dus­tri­alised na­tions have em­braced with vigour.

Choice be­fore us

Who, ex­act­ly, are we try­ing to im­press by main­tain­ing the old or­tho­doxy?

The Caribbean need not choose sides in great pow­er com­pe­ti­tion. But we must choose our­selves. Re­gion­al pro­cure­ment co­or­di­na­tion could trans­form lo­cal agri­cul­ture, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices. It could ad­dress food se­cu­ri­ty, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ac­cess, and dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture. It could build the do­mes­tic ca­pac­i­ty that makes gen­uine sov­er­eign­ty pos­si­ble - the kind that does not de­pend on the good­will of any sin­gle part­ner.

For decades, we were told to open our mar­kets, lib­er­alise our pro­cure­ment, trust in com­pe­ti­tion. We lis­tened. We com­plied. We be­came, as Naipaul might say, mim­ic men - faith­ful­ly re­pro­duc­ing the rules we were giv­en. But the na­tions that wrote those rules nev­er fol­lowed them. They preached open mar­kets and prac­tised strate­gic pro­tec­tion. They lec­tured on com­pe­ti­tion while re­serv­ing con­tracts for their own.

As we en­ter 2026, pow­ers in the Glob­al North have not changed their phi­los­o­phy. They have sim­ply stopped pre­tend­ing. The ques­tion for us is whether we will con­tin­ue mim­ic­k­ing what they told us to do or fi­nal­ly learn from what they do. Pro­cure­ment is not ad­min­is­tra­tion. It is state­craft.

This col­umn, which was com­plet­ed be­fore Sat­ur­day's ex­trac­tion of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro, marks the fi­nal in­stal­ment of ‘Nav­i­gat­ing the New Pro­cure­ment Regime.’ When this se­ries be­gan, the fo­cus was on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s 2015 Act and the me­chan­ics of com­pli­ance.

In 2026, this col­umn evolves in­to ‘Be­yond Com­pli­ance: Nav­i­gat­ing the New Pro­cure­ment Re­al­i­ty’ where pro­cure­ment meets law, ethics, and sys­tem de­sign for pub­lic val­ue cre­ation.

About the Au­thor

Dr Mar­garet Satya Rose is Head of Satya Ju­ris Cham­bers, At­tor­neys at Law and Founder & CEO of Pro­cure­ment Com­pli­ance Plus. She holds a Doc­tor­ate in Pol­i­cy Re­search and Prac­tice with a spe­cial­ism in pub­lic pro­cure­ment law from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bath. Dr Rose can be con­tact­ed at mrose@pro­cure­ment­com­pli­an­ce­plus.com