To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says To­ba­go looks for­ward to work­ing with US Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump and his ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He al­so ex­tend­ed ad­vance cour­te­sies to the am­bas­sador to be ap­point­ed by Trump. Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia last evening, Au­gus­tine con­grat­u­lat­ed the cit­i­zens of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca for vot­ing in large num­bers, say­ing he now wish­es the US had a smooth tran­si­tion of pow­er.

Au­gus­tine al­so men­tioned that the peo­ple of To­ba­go are ea­ger to see Trump’s poli­cies on Latin Amer­i­ca, the Caribbean, and T&T. “Like the rest of the world, we look for­ward to see­ing a peace­ful tran­si­tion of pow­er, and we anx­ious­ly await the in­com­ing pres­i­dent’s poli­cies to­wards Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, and in par­tic­u­lar Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

How­ev­er, he not­ed that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) does not in­ter­fere in oth­er coun­tries’ in­ter­nal mat­ters.

“Out­side of that, it is not the pol­i­cy of this THA to be over­ly con­cerned or to med­dle in the in­ter­nal af­fairs of oth­er coun­tries.

“There­fore, the peo­ple of To­ba­go will work along with the new­ly elect­ed leader of the free world and will, as per usu­al, give all cour­te­sies and re­spect to the US am­bas­sador that will be ap­point­ed to this coun­try by Pres­i­dent-elect Trump.”

To­ba­go Cham­ber con­cerned about Drag­on gas deal

Mean­while, the head of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Cur­tis Williams, said he was con­cerned about the fu­ture of the Drag­on gas deal be­tween T&T and Venezuela af­ter Trump’s pres­i­den­tial win.

He ex­plained that based on his ob­ser­va­tions dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign, un­der Trump’s po­ten­tial for­eign pol­i­cy shifts, crit­i­cal arrange­ments like the Drag­on deal, which T&T bro­kered un­der a US-grant­ed sanc­tions waiv­er, in Jan­u­ary 2023 could be at risk.

“That could be a trou­bling one for us,” Williams said, ex­plain­ing that “our biggest con­cern is the Drag­on gas deal with Venezuela and whether there will be any im­pact on that deal go­ing for­ward.”

He said while the world awaits what di­rec­tion US for­eign pol­i­cy will take in the com­ing weeks and months, T&T should start dis­cus­sions on the pos­si­ble im­pli­ca­tions this change could have on the sur­vival of all ex­ist­ing com­mit­ments. Williams said, “So I’m hop­ing that the Prime Min­is­ter puts to­geth­er a team led by the For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter and some oth­er tech­nocrats in the min­istry, and they start their lob­by­ing to en­sure that some of those poli­cies don’t change, to give us any kind of ef­fect, you know, and with­in the guide­lines or the things that we have al­ready signed off with, es­pe­cial­ly with Venezuela. That could be trou­ble­some for us.”

The Drag­on gas agree­ment was cleared by the US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion—af­ter years of diplo­mat­ic pe­ti­tions—but on the con­di­tion that T&T would not pay Venezuela di­rect­ly in cash to com­ply with US sanc­tions. This per­mis­sion to ex­plore this gas field has been de­scribed as a vi­tal boost for the en­er­gy sec­tor and sup­port for the in­dus­try across the re­gion.