The T&T Postal Cor­po­ra­tion (TTPost) has con­firmed that its sus­pen­sion of par­cel ship­ments to the Unit­ed States mir­rors the mea­sures tak­en by postal agen­cies world­wide, fol­low­ing Wash­ing­ton’s sud­den trade pol­i­cy shift that re­moved du­ty-free thresh­olds for im­port­ed goods.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor George Alex­is told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the Unit­ed King­dom, Ger­many, Japan and Cana­da have all in­tro­duced sim­i­lar stop­gap mea­sures since the US gov­ern­ment sus­pend­ed the de min­imis ex­emp­tion.

“We are all en­cour­aged to find ways to ad­just to the re­quire­ments of the US gov­ern­ment. It is a sit­u­a­tion of lit­tle TTPost, big UK. Lit­tle TTPost, big Ger­many. Lit­tle TTPost, big Cana­da. Lit­tle TTPost, big Japan. All have im­ple­ment­ed these stop­gap mea­sures that we have for our own cus­tomers,” Alex­is said.

As of Au­gust 29, TTPost tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed all mer­chan­dise and goods ship­ments to the US. The move came af­ter a US Ex­ec­u­tive Or­der is­sued on Ju­ly 30 end­ed the du­ty-free al­lowance for goods val­ued at un­der US$800. Now, all items en­ter­ing the US are sub­ject to cus­toms du­ties. Let­ter mail and doc­u­ment ship­ments re­main un­af­fect­ed, while pri­vate couri­ers con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing with­out ma­jor dis­rup­tion.

The sus­pen­sion has struck a blow to small ex­porters, cot­tage in­dus­tries, and mi­cro-en­ter­pris­es, many of whom re­lied on TTPost’s low­er-cost ser­vice to reach di­as­po­ra cus­tomers and niche mar­kets in the US.

In a me­dia re­lease, TTPost said it is work­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to re­store ship­ments, while re­it­er­at­ing that all non-doc­u­ment pack­ages bound for the US will re­main re­strict­ed un­til sys­tems are up­dat­ed.

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath yes­ter­day con­firmed that TTPost has been giv­en two weeks to present rec­om­men­da­tions on how it will ad­just. He said the min­istry was al­so work­ing to mit­i­gate the im­pact, par­tic­u­lar­ly on small busi­ness­es. Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, and St Vin­cent are fac­ing sim­i­lar prob­lems, and Padarath not­ed that he does not ex­pect Wash­ing­ton to re­verse its de­ci­sion.

The Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce al­so yes­ter­day raised alarm over the de­vel­op­ment. Cham­ber pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh de­scribed the US de­ci­sion as “un­for­tu­nate,” say­ing it will have a dele­te­ri­ous ef­fect on the MSME sec­tor. He ex­plained that many cot­tage in­dus­tries de­pend heav­i­ly on the US-based di­as­po­ra to ex­pand ex­ports, and warned that “some busi­ness­es, un­for­tu­nate­ly, will face the harsh re­al­i­ty of not be­ing able to sur­vive if this mat­ter is not dealt with ex­pe­di­tious­ly.”

Singh not­ed that T&T is al­ready un­der strain from for­eign ex­change short­ages, and said the new US tar­iffs and tax­es would place busi­ness­es in an even more pre­car­i­ous fi­nan­cial po­si­tion. He urged the Gov­ern­ment to lever­age its trade re­la­tions with Wash­ing­ton, adding, “We are plead­ing with the USA to re­con­sid­er these im­pli­ca­tions on the trade pol­i­cy for this coun­try.”

Alex­is said TTPost will con­tin­ue en­gag­ing with its line min­istry and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies for guid­ance. “As we learn on a dai­ly ba­sis, we will en­gage… for as­sis­tance or guid­ance on this mat­ter,” he said.

In­dus­try stake­hold­ers al­so voiced con­cern.

T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce pres­i­dent Son­ji Pierre-Chase said the de­ci­sion orig­i­nat­ed from US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s an­ti-drug traf­fick­ing mea­sures, which elim­i­nat­ed the US$800 ex­emp­tion. Web Source CEO Lin­coln Ma­haraj warned that cus­tomers could face ship­ping costs of up to ten times high­er than be­fore, pre­dict­ing that many will now turn to pri­vate couri­ers.

Calls and mes­sages to Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj and Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo on the is­sue went unan­swered.