Op­po­si­tion MP, Bri­an Man­ning, yes­ter­day cau­tioned that the 15 per cent tar­iffs that the Unit­ed States is prepar­ing to im­pose on ex­ports from T&T on Thurs­day could put ad­di­tion­al strain on this coun­try’s for­eign re­serves and sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease the risk of a de­val­u­a­tion of the TT dol­lar.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment where he was go­ing to sign the con­do­lence book for the late In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor, De­oroop Teemal, Man­ning said the man­u­fac­tur­ing and en­er­gy sec­tors are the two largest gen­er­a­tors of for­eign ex­change in this coun­try and the US is T&T’s largest trad­ing part­ner. That means the im­po­si­tion of tar­iffs by the US is go­ing to af­fect the sup­ply of for­eign ex­change in T&T.

“That in turn is al­so go­ing to af­fect our ex­change rate. So it puts more pres­sure and makes it more like­ly that there will be a de­val­u­a­tion go­ing for­ward. You have to re­call it was the UNC, when they were in op­po­si­tion, that had been call­ing for sanc­tions against Trinidad and To­ba­go. And now that they’ve got­ten it from the Unit­ed States, we would all like to see ex­act­ly what it is that they’re go­ing to do.

“What they should do, I would rec­om­mend that they be­gin dis­cus­sions with the Unit­ed States be­cause it has been us­ing these tar­iffs to re­al­ly bring var­i­ous trad­ing part­ners around the world to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble to come up with a new deal in terms of trade with the US,” said Man­ning.

He de­scribed the pos­si­ble im­po­si­tion of the 15 per cent tar­iffs by the US gov­ern­ment as “just an­oth­er sit­u­a­tion where this gov­ern­ment has backed it­self in­to an eco­nom­ic cor­ner,” be­cause the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion does not have any idea where the rev­enues are go­ing to come from to pay for the coun­try’s ex­pens­es.

“They shut down the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty. They un­der­mined the Drag­on Deal. They scut­tled the re­open­ing of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery. And now we’ve been hit with these in­creased tar­iffs in two of the ma­jor in­dus­tries that gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change for this coun­try. And that is go­ing to have some se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic con­se­quences go­ing for­ward for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Man­ning said.

Asked if he was wor­ried about the fu­ture of the TT dol­lar, the for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance said, “I’m ab­solute­ly wor­ried. We have re­cent­ly been as­sessed by Stan­dard & Poor’s in terms of our cred­it rat­ing. I don’t ex­pect a down­grade at this point in time be­cause it is a new gov­ern­ment and they should give them a grace pe­ri­od. But it al­most seems cer­tain at this point that we will be down­grad­ed go­ing for­ward. And that al­so places im­mense pres­sure on our ex­change rate.”

Man­ning said many peo­ple be­lieve that T&T is just one step clos­er to a de­val­u­a­tion of its cur­ren­cy, which he said would in­crease the cost of liv­ing for al­most every­thing across the board in this coun­try.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Vish­nu Dhan­paul echoed con­cern, ques­tion­ing the long-term im­pact if tar­iffs con­tin­ue to rise. Dhan­paul rec­om­mend­ed the Gov­ern­ment re­duce its re­liance on the US by ex­pand­ing in­to new ex­port mar­kets, and al­so sug­gest­ed low­er­ing tar­iffs on US im­ports in­to T&T as a po­ten­tial bar­gain­ing chip.

“I don’t know if the rev­enue could han­dle it, but it’s some­thing that I think that we could look at. In oth­er words, if you, hy­po­thet­i­cal­ly speak­ing, ze­ro the tar­iff on US prod­ucts com­ing in­to Trinidad, then the US will have no oth­er op­tion but to re­duce the tar­iff on their side be­cause it’s a tit-for-tat. So I don’t know what will be the re­sult­ing im­pact on rev­enue, sor­ry, but at least it’s some­thing to give con­sid­er­a­tion to,” said Dhan­paul.