The race to the White House in the Unit­ed States is un­der­way to­day, with for­mer US pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump bat­tling cur­rent US Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris for the job of US com­man­der-in-chief.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst and a for­mer for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter, who­ev­er wins could tip the scale of this coun­try’s en­er­gy deal with Venezuela and even im­pact T&T’s forex is­sue.

The US Cen­sus Bu­reau es­ti­mates that 160 mil­lion peo­ple will vote in this year’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Among those cast­ing their bal­lot is 36-year-old Adri­an Joseph, who mi­grat­ed from T&T to Texas 22 years ago.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, he ex­plained what the at­mos­phere was like among vot­ers ahead of the elec­tion.

“There is a lot more aware­ness around vot­ing this time around be­cause of the top­ics in­flu­enced by the dif­fer­ent par­ties. In Texas, there is a lot of aware­ness around the econ­o­my, health­care, and im­mi­gra­tion, and de­pend­ing on the par­ty, it will great­ly in­flu­ence one way or the oth­er,” he ex­plained. With Amer­i­cans poised for elec­tion day to­day and ea­ger to hear who will be­come their 48th pres­i­dent lat­er, Joseph said yes­ter­day was the prover­bial calm be­fore the storm.

“In Hous­ton, it is busi­ness as usu­al, but I’m pret­ty sure that in an­oth­er state like Cal­i­for­nia, it is very high ten­sion; there are the high ten­sion states where things are close and oth­er ar­eas that are pret­ty shel­tered.”

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne said that giv­en the long-stand­ing and “very pro­duc­tive re­la­tion­ship” T&T main­tained with the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, the min­istry has mon­i­tored the buildup to the 2024 US Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion, in­clu­sive of po­si­tions es­poused by both of the main can­di­dates.

“The re­sults will be pro­found­ly con­se­quen­tial to the peo­ple of this hemi­sphere and across the world. Best wish­es to the USA for a free, fair, and safe elec­tion in the best spir­it of democ­ra­cy, and we look for­ward to work­ing with the win­ning team on all mat­ters of mu­tu­al in­ter­est in 2025 and be­yond,” said Browne.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad al­so has her eyes on the US elec­tion.

Speak­ing at her of­fice at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, yes­ter­day, she said it will be a fierce elec­tion bat­tle right down to the end as stakes are seem­ing­ly at an all-time high.

“It is crit­i­cal who­ev­er is the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, in some re­spects, is the Pres­i­dent of the world, and I think that says it all.”

Ram­per­sad, who said she has had her fin­gers on the pulse of the polls, shied away from mak­ing any pre­dic­tions.

“It is very dif­fi­cult to pre­dict at this point, so I would not do that. What I would say is it is a dead heat as the polls are show­ing be­cause that is all the in­for­ma­tion we have,” she said.

Ram­per­sad said the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion not on­ly im­pacts the US but the wider Caribbean and T&T.

“We can­not ig­nore the US elec­tion ever, and so I pay at­ten­tion be­cause it im­pacts us eco­nom­i­cal­ly. Now we are in fi­nan­cial sham­bles, and our gov­ern­ment is say­ing it in so many dif­fer­ent ways.

“We have the is­sue of for­eign ex­change, and our dol­lar is pegged to the US dol­lar. What­ev­er hap­pens to the US dol­lar is go­ing to im­pact the Trinidad and To­ba­go dol­lar.”

She added, “The do­mes­tic crime we are hav­ing is al­so a re­sult of the drug trade. The drugs are trans­shipped to the Caribbean and then sent to the US and Eu­rope. They get the drugs, so it’s for them to curb the de­mand and help us fight the trans­ship­ment to the US.”

Ram­per­sad was al­so crit­i­cal of the is­sue of Venezuela’s role in the Caribbean, par­tic­u­lar­ly trade deals with T&T, which she said will al­so be on the in­com­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion’s radar.

“The US un­der Trump is go­ing to be look­ing at it more weari­ly than the De­moc­rats are, al­though they should al­so be aware as well. The risk of this coun­try trad­ing with Venezuela and be­ing sanc­tioned is high­er un­der Trump than Har­ris.”

For­mer for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter Ralph Maraj al­so cau­tioned against po­ten­tial lim­i­ta­tions in bi­lat­er­al arrange­ments be­tween T&T and Venezuela un­der a Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“Should Don­ald Trump win the elec­tion, does that en­dan­ger our prospects of get­ting Venezuela’s gas? Don­ald Trump has al­ready demon­strat­ed a kind of an­i­mos­i­ty to­wards the Maduro regime.”