GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

T&T will now en­joy ze­ro tar­iffs on crit­i­cal agri­cul­tur­al ex­ports to the Unit­ed States fol­low­ing a de­ci­sion by US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to mod­i­fy the scope of rec­i­p­ro­cal tar­iffs un­der the Amer­i­can tar­iff regime.

On No­vem­ber 14, 2025, Trump signed an ex­ec­u­tive or­der re­vers­ing an ear­li­er April 2 di­rec­tive that had im­posed a 15 per cent tar­iff on ni­tro­gen and phos­phate fer­tilis­ers pre­vi­ous­ly list­ed un­der An­nex II of Ex­ec­u­tive Or­der 14257.

Un­der the re­vised pol­i­cy, T&T would ben­e­fit from du­ty-free ac­cess for key fer­tilis­er prod­ucts, in­clud­ing an­hy­drous am­mo­nia, urea, and urea-am­mo­ni­um ni­trate (UAN).

These prod­ucts, ex­port­ed un­der tar­iff codes 2814.10.00, 3102.10.00, and 3102.80.00, rep­re­sent a mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar trade seg­ment with the Unit­ed States, this coun­try’s largest trad­ing part­ner.

Econ­o­mists wel­comed the de­ci­sion but urged cau­tion, as Dr In­dera Sage­wan called it a ma­jor com­pet­i­tive and po­lit­i­cal win that strength­ens for­eign ex­change earn­ings and job se­cu­ri­ty, while Dr Vanus James warned agri­cul­ture of­fers lit­tle ad­van­tage and stressed the need to fo­cus on gas-based in­dus­tries and en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

Both agree the move sig­nals an op­por­tu­ni­ty but un­der­scores the im­por­tance of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and re­li­able gas sup­ply.

A re­lease is­sued by the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs yes­ter­day stat­ed that in 2024 alone, this coun­try ex­port­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$3 bil­lion worth of these fer­tilis­ers to the US mar­ket. It em­pha­sised that the re­moval of tar­iffs is ex­pect­ed to sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost com­pet­i­tive­ness for lo­cal ex­porters, safe­guard jobs across the na­tion­al val­ue chain, and strength­en the coun­try’s po­si­tion in glob­al agri­cul­tur­al sup­ply chains.

These prod­ucts would now en­ter the US mar­ket du­ty-free, en­hanc­ing the com­pet­i­tive­ness of T&T’s ex­porters and pro­tect­ing jobs across the na­tion­al val­ue chain.

The re­lease said that since the im­po­si­tion of glob­al US tar­iffs ear­li­er this year, this coun­try has adopt­ed a com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy to mit­i­gate neg­a­tive im­pacts on both en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy ex­ports.

It added that over the past four months, sev­er­al high-lev­el en­gage­ments were held to ad­dress the is­sue di­rect­ly with se­nior US of­fi­cials, not­ing that in Au­gust 2025, the Min­is­ters of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs; En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries; Fi­nance, Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment; and Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism met with Am­bas­sador Daniel Wat­son, Unit­ed States Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive (US­TR) for the West­ern Hemi­sphere; William Kim­mitt, Un­der Sec­re­tary of Com­merce for In­ter­na­tion­al Trade; and Am­bas­sador Jamieson Lee Greer, Unit­ed States Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

In Sep­tem­ber 2025, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was in­vit­ed by US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio to high-lev­el dis­cus­sions in Wash­ing­ton, DC.

Dur­ing this vis­it, Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers and Ran­dall Karim, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary/Head of the For­eign Ser­vice, en­gaged se­nior of­fi­cials with­in the Of­fice of the US­TR to re­in­force T&T’s strate­gic im­por­tance to US en­er­gy and food se­cu­ri­ty.

Sobers wel­comed the de­ci­sion of the US, stat­ing that he is en­cour­aged and grate­ful for this out­come, which would bring mean­ing­ful re­lief to ex­porters.

“The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der­stands the se­ri­ous im­pact of in­creased tar­iffs. We will con­tin­ue to work tire­less­ly with the Unit­ed States, pur­su­ing a mul­ti­pronged ne­go­ti­a­tion strat­e­gy to achieve fur­ther re­lief and sus­tained suc­cess,” he said, adding that the Gov­ern­ment would con­tin­ue to strength­en en­gage­ment with the US to se­cure even more favourable mar­ket ac­cess for this coun­try’s en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy ex­ports in­to the world’s largest econ­o­my.

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young said Gov­ern­ment’s vic­to­ry lap was noth­ing but an at­tempt to di­vert at­ten­tion away from what is re­al­ly hap­pen­ing in the sec­tor.

“The UNC Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to at­tempt to hood­wink cit­i­zens and grasp at straws. The re­moval of tar­iffs by the US has noth­ing to do with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment. What does have to do with the UNC Gov­ern­ment is the shut­ting down of four plants by Nu­trien who are one of the largest pro­duc­ers of am­mo­nia and urea glob­al­ly. The con­tin­ued shut down of Nu­trien’s plants is neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ing our coun­try’s rep­u­ta­tion, rev­enues, jobs and even oth­er in­dus­tries and busi­ness­es. The gov­ern­ment’s glar­ing in­com­pe­tence is harm­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go whilst they try to mis­lead the pop­u­la­tion,” he said yes­ter­day.

‘Sig­nif­i­cant re­lief’

Mean­while, the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T (AM­CHAM T&T) al­so agreed that the move is ex­pect­ed to bring sig­nif­i­cant re­lief to lo­cal pro­duc­ers who were im­pact­ed by pre­vi­ous tar­iffs, while re­in­forc­ing the strong trade ties be­tween the two na­tions.

In a re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, AM­CHAM T&T said the re­moval of these tar­iffs re­stores bal­ance to a sec­tor al­ready fac­ing glob­al pres­sures and helps safe­guard the com­pet­i­tive­ness of this coun­try’s petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Agri­cul­ture As­so­ci­a­tion, Daryl Ram­per­sad, al­so wel­comed the de­ci­sion but cau­tioned it should not lead to com­pla­cen­cy.

He stressed the need for a com­pre­hen­sive na­tion­al strat­e­gy to lever­age this ad­van­tage, in­clud­ing in­vest­ment in tech­nol­o­gy, in­fra­struc­ture, and train­ing for farm­ers.

“Tar­iff re­lief is a win, but it’s on­ly one piece of the puz­zle,” he added.

Sage­wan: A com­mer­cial

and po­lit­i­cal win

Sage­wan de­scribed the de­ci­sion as a sig­nif­i­cant boost for T&T’s trade com­pet­i­tive­ness and for­eign ex­change earn­ings.

“By restor­ing ze­ro-du­ty ac­cess on agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts, the US has es­sen­tial­ly re­moved a ma­jor cost bar­ri­er, strength­en­ing the com­pet­i­tive­ness of T&T’s ex­ports. In 2024, the coun­try ex­port­ed around TT$3 bil­lion worth of these prod­ucts to the Unit­ed States, an in­di­ca­tion of the vol­ume of ex­ports that was neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed by the rec­i­p­ro­cal tar­iff,” she said.

She em­pha­sised that the de­ci­sion is not on­ly an eco­nom­ic win but al­so a po­lit­i­cal one, stat­ing: “For the new Gov­ern­ment, se­cur­ing ze­ro tar­iffs on these key ex­ports is a tan­gi­ble demon­stra­tion that they are de­liv­er­ing on trade and eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy. It re­in­forces the mes­sage that they are proac­tive, glob­al­ly en­gaged, and ca­pa­ble of de­fend­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pri­ma­ry and in­dus­tri­al in­ter­ests on the world stage.”

She warned, how­ev­er, that T&T should not be com­pla­cent, not­ing that the US de­ci­sion is dri­ven by its own strate­gic in­ter­ests.

“We must be mind­ful that in this, the US is be­ing strate­gic in its own in­ter­est. The fo­cus is on in­puts in­to val­ue added in the US and en­sur­ing that its agri­cul­tur­al in­dus­try has ac­cess to com­pet­i­tive in­puts. So while we ben­e­fit, we must not be naive to the un­der­ly­ing dy­nam­ics,” Sage­wan ad­vised.

James: Com­par­a­tive ad­van­tage and en­er­gy risks

James of­fered a con­trast­ing per­spec­tive, warn­ing that the ben­e­fits of ze­ro tar­iffs on agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts may be over­stat­ed.

“In sharp con­trast with the USA, Trinidad and To­ba­go has no com­par­a­tive ad­van­tage in agri­cul­ture, so ze­ro tar­iffs on that type of out­put are not es­pe­cial­ly valu­able un­less the coun­try is al­so ex­ploit­ing its ad­van­tages in pro­duc­ing and ex­port­ing pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices and thus cre­at­ing bet­ter jobs that could at­tract young peo­ple out of agri­cul­ture. Any oth­er ap­proach to agri­cul­tur­al ex­ports is a pre­scrip­tion for pover­ty in the agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties,” he said.

He point­ed to Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice da­ta show­ing agri­cul­ture gen­er­ates the low­est me­di­an month­ly in­come in the econ­o­my, about TT$3,000, com­pared to TT$8,000 in gas-based in­dus­tries.

James al­so not­ed that af­ter con­sid­er­ing price-re­lat­ed risk, some ad­van­tage is avail­able from gas-based prod­ucts such as liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG), petro­chem­i­cals like am­mo­nia, methanol, and poly­olefins, and nat­ur­al gas liq­uids (NGLs) such as ethane, propane, and bu­tane, stat­ing that there is al­so a risk-ad­just­ed ad­van­tage from ap­pli­ca­tions such as urea and var­i­ous linked spe­cial­ty prod­ucts.

How­ev­er, he cau­tioned: “Ze­ro tar­iffs on these prod­ucts would be help­ful... How­ev­er, the ze­ro tar­iffs are use­less un­less the sup­ply of gas is avail­able to keep and de­vel­op the ex­ist­ing gas-based in­dus­tri­al plants in Point Lisas and Point Fortin (At­lantic LNG, etc). It is that sup­ply that is put at risk when T&T joins the im­pe­ri­al­ist threat to Venezuela by the USA.”

Not­ing that cur­rent­ly T&T con­sumes ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2.3 bil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet (scf) of nat­ur­al gas per day but re­quires 4.1 bil­lion scf dai­ly to op­er­ate at full ca­pac­i­ty, James said this short­fall un­der­scores the strate­gic im­por­tance of cross-bor­der gas fields and Venezuela’s Drag­on field in meet­ing do­mes­tic en­er­gy needs.

“This is why both the cross-bor­der fields and Drag­on are im­por­tant to the as­sess­ment of the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of the econ­o­my and the use­ful­ness of ze­ro tar­iffs. Tak­en to­geth­er, the ma­jor­i­ty of the cross-bor­der gas is in Venezuela, as is all of the Drag­on gas,” he added.