PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

Stake­hold­ers across var­i­ous sec­tors are call­ing for col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts to off­set any po­ten­tial im­pact from the in­crease in rec­i­p­ro­cal tar­iff rates from 10 to 15 per cent by the Unit­ed States.

The in­crease in tar­iffs, es­tab­lished by an ex­ec­u­tive or­der is­sued by the White House on Ju­ly 31, 2025, will take ef­fect on Thurs­day, Au­gust 7.

In a news re­lease, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (TT Cham­ber) called on the Gov­ern­ment and Cari­com to meet with the US gov­ern­ment to find a res­o­lu­tion in the best in­ter­est of the re­gion.

The re­lease said, “This lat­est ac­tion rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant de­par­ture from the long-stand­ing prin­ci­ples of the Caribbean Basin Ini­tia­tive (CBI) which is a US pol­i­cy frame­work de­signed to pro­mote eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and ex­port-led growth in the Caribbean through pref­er­en­tial mar­ket ac­cess. Trinidad and To­ba­go, as a key ben­e­fi­cia­ry un­der the Caribbean Basin Eco­nom­ic Re­cov­ery Act (CBERA), has long re­lied on sta­ble, pref­er­en­tial trade with the Unit­ed States to bol­ster its man­u­fac­tur­ing and ex­port ca­pac­i­ty.”

The re­lease added, “This mo­ment high­lights the need to re­vis­it and mod­ernise the Caribbean Basin Ini­tia­tive, en­sur­ing that it re­mains fit for pur­pose in a chang­ing geopo­lit­i­cal and trade en­vi­ron­ment.”

Di­rec­tor at the Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of Trinidad & To­ba­go Don­ny Rogers al­so called on the gov­ern­ment to re­view its ap­proach to agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and com­pet­i­tive­ness in terms of ex­ports as it is one the in­dus­tries that would be neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed by the sit­u­a­tion.

Rogers not­ed, “By Thurs­day, we will have an in­creased tar­iff of 15 per cent on goods we ex­port to the Unit­ed States. Gen­er­al­ly, en­er­gy-re­lat­ed prod­ucts and some fer­tilis­ers are ex­empt. There­fore, this means that the im­pact on the next clas­si­fi­ca­tions of goods orig­i­nat­ing from T&T would be man­u­fac­tured goods as well as agri­cul­tur­al ex­ports.”

He how­ev­er said the coun­try had lost ground in the agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion since COVID and this has seen the coun­try lose ground in terms of ex­ports to the US mar­ket. An is­sue fur­ther ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the tar­iff in­crease, but he said mea­sures could be placed to ad­dress these chal­lenges.

Aboud: High­er im­ports prices

Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud how­ev­er urged the pub­lic not to swept up in the sen­sa­tion­al as­pect of the an­nounce­ment, not­ing that T&T had been placed on the low­er end of the tar­iff in­creas­es.

He said, “Where we have to be con­cerned is that we have a large num­ber of busi­ness­es and man­u­fac­tur­ers who are net im­porters from the Unit­ed States of prod­ucts to keep their busi­ness­es go­ing. And to a large ex­tent, a huge pro­por­tion of Amer­i­can prod­ucts are not made in Amer­i­ca. So that if you are buy­ing a com­pres­sor for your equip­ment or you are buy­ing a pul­ley for your man­u­fac­tur­ing plant, it is very like­ly that that was made some­where else, most like­ly in Chi­na.There­fore, prod­ucts go­ing in­to Amer­i­ca from those na­tions will cost more, and there­fore they will cost us more to im­port them. So in that re­gard, there is some im­pact.”

How­ev­er, the DO­MA Pres­i­dent al­so stat­ed there was an eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty that this coun­try could seize in the sit­u­a­tion.

‘Tar­iffs are be­ing im­posed on prod­ucts be­ing shipped to the Unit­ed States, but one im­por­tant cat­e­go­ry of prod­uct over which we have tremen­dous po­ten­tial and con­trol is tourism. And there is no tar­iff be­ing ap­plied to tourism. We are free to de­vel­op our tourism busi­ness and to bring in the tens of thou­sands of tourists a month that Bar­ba­dos and Grena­da and St. Lu­cia and St. Vin­cent and Ja­maica and St. Kitts and An­tigua and all the oth­er na­tions are do­ing,” said Aboud, who stat­ed the an­nounce­ment could be “a wake up call to the sleepy econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”