DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment is be­ing urged to em­bark on an in­for­ma­tion cam­paign to ad­vise T&T na­tion­als about the im­pact of the Unit­ed States tar­iffs.

The US has im­posed tar­iffs on var­i­ous goods from the Caribbean, in­clud­ing T&T, with rates rang­ing from ten to 25 per cent de­pend­ing on the prod­uct.

The ad­vice from an in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert fol­lows a re­cent mes­sage from Cari­com chair Mia Mot­t­ley, who em­pha­sised that the Caribbean is not in­su­lat­ed from glob­al chal­lenges.

In a state­ment late Fri­day, Mot­t­ley high­light­ed the in­ter­con­nect­ed crises fac­ing the world, such as cli­mate change, the cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis, mis­in­for­ma­tion, men­tal health is­sues, ris­ing crime, and glob­al con­flicts. She stressed that these chal­lenges will di­rect­ly im­pact Caribbean peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly with ris­ing costs due to glob­al trade dis­rup­tions and tar­iffs.

“We sug­gest that the re­gion take steps to sus­tain the tourism in­dus­try, as like­ly wors­en­ing con­di­tions and many of our source mar­kets will have neg­a­tive im­pacts on peo­ple’s abil­i­ty to trav­el. We call on our re­gion­al pri­vate sec­tor and the tourism sec­tor to come to­geth­er and to work with gov­ern­ments to col­lab­o­rate for an im­me­di­ate tourism strat­e­gy,” she said.

Mot­t­ley’s speech al­so served as a call for uni­ty and col­lec­tive ac­tion to pri­ori­tise self-suf­fi­cien­cy by in­vest­ing in lo­cal agri­cul­ture and man­u­fac­tur­ing to re­duce de­pen­dence on im­ports. She said the “25 by 2025” ini­tia­tive, led by Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali, who is re­spon­si­ble for agri­cul­ture in Cari­com’s qua­si-cab­i­net, was not suf­fi­cient.

Mot­t­ley dou­bled down on calls for all sec­tors across the re­gion to buy and sup­port lo­cal.

“We could low­er our tar­iffs to ze­ro in Cari­com, and it will not make a lick of dif­fer­ence, be­cause our economies are small and vul­ner­a­ble,” she said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she warned re­gion­al heads of state against ex­ploit­ing these dif­fi­cul­ties for po­lit­i­cal gain.

IR ex­pert urges Gov’t to em­bark on in­for­ma­tion cam­paign

In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les agreed that the cur­rent cli­mate pos­es that threat.

“I think some coun­tries feel that they can make gains by go­ing in­di­vid­u­al­ly; they can set­tle their prob­lems quick­ly with the Unit­ed States, and that would be in their best na­tion­al in­ter­ests.”

He al­so ad­vised the Gov­ern­ment to em­bark on an in­for­ma­tion cam­paign to sen­si­tise the pop­u­la­tion about these glob­al de­vel­op­ments.

“I mean, we are small so­ci­eties. It’s very easy to com­mu­ni­cate with peo­ple here. We have sig­nif­i­cant me­dia. We have so­cial me­dia. We have all the avail­able me­dia that you need to com­mu­ni­cate with peo­ple. The Gov­ern­ment needs to get the mes­sage out.”

How­ev­er, Dr Gon­za­les cau­tioned that it is dif­fi­cult in the short term for the re­gion to achieve mean­ing­ful self-suf­fi­cien­cy in agri­cul­ture and light man­u­fac­tur­ing.

He al­so echoed Mot­t­ley’s con­cerns about Caribbean cit­i­zens’ de­pen­dence on Amer­i­can prod­ucts.

Seek­ing to al­lay fears, the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T ad­vised that a price hike is not like­ly in the short term.

“What we’ve seen, anec­do­tal ev­i­dence and re­port­ing, shows that man­u­fac­tur­ers in these states have front-loaded im­ports for the last quar­ter and should have enough stock on hand to be able to ral­ly to non-in­creased prices for three to six months.”

Ef­forts to reach the pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tels and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion for com­ment on Mot­t­ley’s con­cerns about tourism were un­suc­cess­ful. At­tempts to ob­tain re­spons­es from Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne re­gard­ing these is­sues were met with si­lence.