PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says he will ad­vo­cate for Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Cari­com re­gion amid the con­cerns about new tar­iffs that were an­nounced by the Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

The Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent re­vealed yes­ter­day that T&T was among the coun­tries that would face re­tal­i­a­tion tar­iffs to be im­ple­ment­ed im­me­di­ate­ly.

How­ev­er, while ad­dress­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce An­nu­al Busi­ness meet­ing at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Young stressed that he would con­tin­ue ne­go­ti­a­tions with the US about that sit­u­a­tion.

“What you’ve seen, I will ar­gue, and I will ad­vo­cate. Over the last 10 years, de­spite the volatil­i­ty of the rule, we have even more volatile times with de­ci­sions be­ing made far out of Trinidad and To­ba­go that have di­rect ef­fects on us. You see the tar­iff regimes that are lit­er­al­ly aris­ing by the day, but you’ve al­so seen the abil­i­ty of cred­i­bil­i­ty and a good rep­u­ta­tion,” said Young, mo­ments be­fore Trump an­nounced that T&T would be slapped with a 10 per cent tar­iff.

He re­ferred to his re­cent meet­ing with US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, as he con­tin­ued, “Go­ing to sit across the ta­ble, for ex­am­ple, the Sec­re­tary of State less than a week ago, and to put for­ward the ar­gu­ments, not on­ly for Trinidad...but for the Cari­com re­gion, as to how some of these in­qui­si­tions can have detri­men­tal ef­fects on us, and that type of sta­bil­i­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, I humbly sub­mit to you to­day, is what is re­quired to con­tin­ue to take Trinidad and To­ba­go through next few years.”

Young said it was im­por­tant to main­tain sta­bil­i­ty with­in the busi­ness sec­tor, giv­en the chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion the coun­try con­tin­ued to nav­i­gate. Young ac­knowl­edged that the coun­try had on­ly seen two sur­plus bud­gets in over two decades.

New cham­ber pres­i­dent, Son­ja Pierre-Chase, al­so con­firmed the cham­ber had an eye on the tar­iff sit­u­a­tion as she made her in­au­gur­al ad­dress at the event.

“As we see the is­sues play­ing out with the geopol­i­tics and the tar­iff wars, we’re all sit­ting cau­tious­ly at our desk for this 4 o’clock an­nounce­ment ... whether we call it the day of de­lib­er­a­tion or the day of re­tal­i­a­tion. Our key part­ner, the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, and most im­por­tant­ly Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, we have worked col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly in en­hanc­ing the mea­sures aimed at build­ing a stronger and more re­silient busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to de­vel­op na­tion­al and eco­nom­ic growth.”

Pierre-Chase re­placed Ki­ran Ma­haraj, who served for the past two years.