GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Busi­ness lead­ers and com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sion­als in Trinidad and To­ba­go are cau­tious­ly as­sess­ing the im­pli­ca­tions of the re­cent US midterm elec­tions. Their views range from po­ten­tial ex­port op­por­tu­ni­ties and busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity to the grow­ing in­flu­ence of younger po­lit­i­cal lead­ers and chang­ing vot­er sen­ti­ment.

CGA Ltd chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Gabrielle Agos­ti­ni said the elec­tion re­sults have gen­er­at­ed op­ti­mism among lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers seek­ing greater ac­cess to the US mar­ket.

“It’s ex­cit­ing news, what has hap­pened this week, but we can on­ly wait and see what’s go­ing to hap­pen over the next cou­ple of months or year,” Agos­ti­ni told Guardian Me­dia af­ter the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce’s Cham­pi­ons of Busi­ness Awards 2026 at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day evening.

She said the Unit­ed States re­mains an at­trac­tive mar­ket for lo­cal prod­ucts and ex­pressed hope that T&T man­u­fac­tur­ers could ben­e­fit from ex­pand­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“We do hope that we, as well as many oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers, would be able to ex­port more in­to the US mar­ket be­cause it’s a very sim­i­lar cul­ture to us. Be­ing able to show­case our prod­ucts in that mar­ket would be amaz­ing, so we just have to wait and see,” she said.

Dr Paula Robert­son, a di­rec­tor at Just Kidz Emer­gency Med­ical, said it was too ear­ly to de­ter­mine the elec­tions’ full im­pact on lo­cal busi­ness­es.

“We were for­tu­nate in terms of tim­ing be­cause our ma­jor in­vest­ments were at the in­cep­tion of the busi­ness,” Robin­son said.

Just Kidz now op­er­ates pri­mar­i­ly as a ser­vice-based en­ter­prise and has lim­it­ed need for reg­u­lar pur­chas­es from the Unit­ed States.

While she does not an­tic­i­pate an im­me­di­ate ef­fect on the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions, Robert­son urged busi­ness lead­ers to re­main vig­i­lant.

“I would def­i­nite­ly say to my busi­ness col­leagues to keep an eye and see how things are mov­ing as we go in­to the next one to five years,” she said.

Desmond Dougall, Gis­cad Ltd group CEO, said the elec­tion out­come was un­like­ly to sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions.

“I don’t see any ma­jor change in our busi­ness. Oth­er com­pa­nies, maybe, but we use tech­nolo­gies com­ing out of these coun­tries,” Dougall said.

“I don’t think any­thing’s go­ing to change in terms of tar­iffs on those tech­nolo­gies com­ing out of those coun­tries,” he added.

Me­dia In­Site founder and CEO Al­li­son De­mas said the elec­tion re­sults re­flect­ed trends that had been vis­i­ble for some time.

“In terms of the blue wave, if you’ve been fol­low­ing what’s hap­pen­ing in the US me­dia and if you’ve been fol­low­ing the polls, I think it was in­evitable,” De­mas said.

She said vot­er dis­sat­is­fac­tion with cer­tain pol­i­cy de­ci­sions played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the out­come.

“We know that cer­tain mea­sures have not been pop­u­lar, and I think it was cer­tain­ly a protest vote against what’s hap­pen­ing,” she said.

The com­mu­ni­ca­tions im­pli­ca­tions of the elec­tion were al­so high­light­ed by Te­nielle Clarke, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and prin­ci­pal pub­li­cist of Cham­bers Me­dia So­lu­tions

“I think every elec­tion cy­cle, re­gard­less of if it’s in the US or in the Caribbean, we see a chang­ing of the tide as it re­lates to how po­lit­i­cal camps are able to com­mu­ni­cate mes­sag­ing,” she said.

Clarke point­ed to the emer­gence of mil­len­ni­al, Gen­er­a­tion X and Gen­er­a­tion Z lead­ers as one of the most sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ments of the elec­tion cy­cle.

“One thing that I re­al­ly took no­tice of from this par­tic­u­lar midterm elec­tion was the ush­er­ing in of mil­len­ni­al and Gen X and Gen Z lead­er­ship, and I think that that is some­thing that every­one needs to pay at­ten­tion to, not just pub­li­cists, but every­one is af­fect­ed by pol­i­tics,” she said.

Po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments ex­tend be­yond elec­tion cam­paigns and in­flu­ence dai­ly life, con­sumer be­hav­iour and busi­ness de­ci­sions, Clarke added.

“It’s al­ways in­ter­est­ing to me when peo­ple say that they’re not in­volved in pol­i­tics, but pol­i­tics is in­volved in you,” the speak­er said.

“It’s re­al­ly im­por­tant that we con­tin­ue to pay at­ten­tion to the mes­sag­ing and see how peo­ple are us­ing that as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to em­pow­er them­selves in their dai­ly de­ci­sion-mak­ing.”