Min­is­ter of Trade Paula Gopee-Scoon says of­fi­cials from this coun­try and the Unit­ed States have agreed to en­gage in di­a­logue to con­tin­u­ous­ly re­view the tar­iff struc­ture be­tween the two na­tions.

The as­sur­ance came af­ter a meet­ing be­tween the Min­is­ter and Jenifer Nei­d­hart de Or­tiz, Chargé d’af­faires, and a team from the Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain to dis­cuss the is­sue.

The Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion on Wednes­day, im­posed a base­line 10 per cent im­port tar­iff on all goods en­ter­ing the Unit­ed States, ef­fec­tive April 5, in­clud­ing from long-stand­ing part­ners such as T&T.

Yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try made it clear that this coun­try’s ex­ports have not been dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly dis­ad­van­taged as the low­est rec­i­p­ro­cal tar­iff rate has been ap­plied.

In a news re­lease, the min­istry said T&T’s ex­ports to the Unit­ed States and the rest of Cari­com’s ex­ports (ex­cept Guyana) have been giv­en the min­i­mum dis­count­ed rec­i­p­ro­cal base rate of 10 per cent.  

This it said vast­ly dif­fers from oth­er rates ap­plied to many coun­tries glob­al­ly which range from 10-50 per cent.  

To help the pub­lic un­der­stand the tar­iff im­po­si­tion, the min­istry un­der­scored that some of T&T’s largest ex­port com­modi­ties to the Unit­ed States (such as Crude Pe­tro­le­um and Na­tion­al Gas) will NOT be sub­ject to the Rec­i­p­ro­cal Tar­iff.  

“Items such as en­er­gy and oth­er crit­i­cal min­er­als that are not avail­able in the Unit­ed States have been ex­empt­ed as out­lined in An­nex II of the Pres­i­dent’s Ex­ec­u­tive Ac­tions. A pre­lim­i­nary analy­sis by the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try re­veals that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 47 per cent of the to­tal val­ue of T&T’s ex­ports to the Unit­ed States will not be af­fect­ed,” the re­lease stat­ed.

Be­fore the meet­ing be­tween Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon and US of­fi­cials took place, Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said Gov­ern­ment was eval­u­at­ing the im­pact of the 10% tar­iff re­cent­ly im­posed by the Unit­ed States on goods im­port­ed from T&T, which is set to take ef­fect on April 9. How­ev­er, he as­sured the pub­lic that up­dates would be pro­vid­ed once the gov­ern­ment had com­plet­ed its as­sess­ment.

Young made the com­ment at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence held at White Hall yes­ter­day.

“It does not ap­pear to be a blan­ket tar­iff of 10% on all goods ex­port­ed from Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to the Unit­ed States. There are, it ap­pears, cer­tain ex­cep­tions,” he said.

He added: “From a log­i­cal point of view, the wide-rang­ing im­po­si­tion, mean­ing many, many coun­tries across the world, some with high­er rates than oth­ers, it does not ap­pear on the ini­tial face of it that it makes things less com­pet­i­tive. Be­cause if every­body is start­ing off at a base­line, it means every­body in­creas­es. But it is pre­ma­ture for me to say any­thing at this stage as to the specifics of Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause there are ex­cep­tions and we’re still gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion and, of course, there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for con­ver­sa­tion with the Unit­ed States.”

Stress­ing that Cari­com will be more ef­fec­tive if it speaks as a unit­ed bloc, Young re­vealed that lead­ers of the re­gion­al group­ing will meet vir­tu­al­ly on April 11, where he ex­pects the tar­iff is­sue to be ad­dressed, if not be­fore then.

When asked about com­pa­nies that ex­port en­er­gy prod­ucts to the US, such as methanol, and the im­me­di­ate im­pact on those com­pa­nies and the Gov­ern­ment’s abil­i­ty to gen­er­ate tax rev­enue if the tar­iffs re­duce their prof­its, Young said the sit­u­a­tion re­mains un­cer­tain, whether for methanol, am­mo­nia, or LNG.

“I’m be­ing told in a pre­lim­i­nary man­ner some of those prod­ucts I’ve just list­ed may not be af­fect­ed by the tar­iffs. So, I think it’s pre­ma­ture for me to make any de­c­la­ra­tions.”

Mean­while, the Prime Min­is­ter re­frained from com­ment­ing on whether the tar­iffs would ex­ac­er­bate the de­mand for for­eign ex­change but ex­pressed the be­lief that it was un­like­ly.

“I can’t see that it im­me­di­ate­ly does un­less there’s a re­duc­tion in our in­come flow of for­eign ex­change as a re­sult but as I’ve just ex­plained, there are many mar­kets. The Unit­ed States is one mar­ket in the whole glob­al econ­o­my. For­tu­nate­ly, our en­er­gy prod­ucts find homes in many coun­tries across the world, not on­ly there,” he said.

Young will meet with bankers to­day to con­tin­ue con­ver­sa­tions about the on­go­ing forex short­age.

The al­lo­ca­tion of for­eign ex­change, as well as bank charges and fees, were among the is­sues raised by Young at his meet­ing with mem­bers of the bank­ing sec­tor at White­hall on March 25.

St Lu­cia to ramp up mon­i­tor­ing of US trade poli­cies

Saint Lu­cia has es­tab­lished a task force to “mon­i­tor and eval­u­ate the ef­fects of changes in US trade poli­cies” as it ac­tive­ly as­sess­es the im­pact of the Unit­ed States’ new­ly im­posed 10% tar­iff on im­ports from Caribbean Basin Ini­tia­tive (CBI) coun­tries.

A state­ment from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter lament­ed the fail­ure of the US gov­ern­ment to present an of­fi­cial com­mu­niqué to St Lu­cia through the usu­al diplo­mat­ic and for­mal chan­nels re­gard­ing the changes to its trade regime. How­ev­er, St Lu­cia said it is eval­u­at­ing what it knows.