JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath says he is hop­ing to re­solve the is­sue of tax­es in the Unit­ed States that forced the Trinidad and To­ba­go Postal Cor­po­ra­tion (TTPost) to tem­porar­i­ly stop all ex­ports to the US that are not pack­ages.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, TTPost said due to a US Ex­ec­u­tive Or­der of Ju­ly 30, 2025, en­ti­tled “Sus­pend­ing Du­ty-Free De Min­imis Treat­ment for all Coun­tries,” which comes in­to ef­fect to­day, all client pack­ages that are not doc­u­ments can­not be sent to the US.

Oth­er Caribbean coun­tries, among them St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica, al­so im­ple­ment­ed sim­i­lar mea­sures yes­ter­day.

TTPost’s re­lease added that it is ac­tive­ly en­gag­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to ad­dress the mat­ter and re­store the ship­ment of parcels as soon as pos­si­ble. It said the du­ty-free de min­imis ex­emp­tion for goods val­ued at US$800 meant all in­ter­na­tion­al postal items con­tain­ing goods des­tined for the US, re­gard­less of val­ue, will now be sub­ject to cus­toms du­ties.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue, Padarath told Guardian Me­dia that he was made aware of the sit­u­a­tion on Wednes­day and is seek­ing a speedy res­o­lu­tion.

“It has cre­at­ed an op­er­a­tional chal­lenge,” he said, adding that he asked the com­pa­ny to show how its op­er­a­tions will be af­fect­ed by the in­tro­duc­tion of the tax­es with­in “a rea­son­able time­line.”

“I am await­ing fur­ther ad­vice on that. But I’m hop­ing that it will be a short time­frame so that we can mit­i­gate any fur­ther im­pact in terms of dis­rupt­ing the op­er­a­tions of TTPost. I am ad­vised that some of these pri­vate ser­vice providers con­tin­ue to op­er­ate un­af­fect­ed in terms of their op­er­a­tional is­sues.”

Padarath said the op­er­a­tional­is­ing of the tax­es is his main con­cern. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that there is noth­ing yet in place to de­ter­mine the val­ue the US may place on an item that is to be ex­port­ed, as the tax­es are im­posed on the US val­ue of the prod­uct.

Padarath said based on the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion on the mat­ter, he is not of the view that the US would change their pol­i­cy. He said mov­ing for­ward, TTPost was giv­en two weeks to “make their rec­om­men­da­tions and put their house in or­der,” and then the coun­try will be up­dat­ed.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the de­vel­op­ment, T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce pres­i­dent Son­ji Pierre-Chase said it will im­pact small busi­ness­es. She ex­plained that the de­ci­sion stemmed from Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s fight against drug car­tels, re­sult­ing in all items cost­ing less than US$800 now be­ing sub­ject­ed to reg­u­lar du­ties.

“The change will im­pact small ex­ports to the US from Trinidad and To­ba­go, with po­ten­tial con­se­quen­tial loss­es. TTPost’s tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of ship­ments to the US is in com­pli­ance with the Ex­ec­u­tive Or­der, which we un­der­stand has been equal­ly im­ple­ment­ed in oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions, in­clud­ing the UK, EU and Ja­maica,” Pierre-Chase said.

“Nonethe­less, the cham­ber notes that it will have an im­pact on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go, in par­tic­u­lar, our mem­bers in the SME sec­tor who ex­port their prod­ucts in these parcels to the US.”

She added that the cham­ber was com­fort­ed that TTPost is ac­tive­ly en­gaged with its in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to ad­dress the mat­ter and re­store the ship­ment of parcels as soon as pos­si­ble.

“We look for­ward to an ex­pe­di­tious res­o­lu­tion of the mat­ter,” she said.

Mean­while, Web Source CEO Lin­coln Ma­haraj said this de­vel­op­ment means cus­tomers will be forced to pay pos­si­bly up to ten times the cost they once paid to send the same pack­age they may have sent last week.

He said the im­me­di­ate im­pact will be an in­flux of cus­tomers to pri­vate couri­ers.

“On the couri­er side of things, based on the zip code, it will vary in cost, and it is go­ing to be at least six, eight, ten times more for the same said pack­age to go through a couri­er ser­vice,” Ma­haraj said.

This lat­est is­sue is sep­a­rate from the 15 per cent tar­iff im­posed on all im­ports to the US by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Ear­li­er this month, Trump set a 15 per cent tar­iff on im­ports from T&T un­der a new ex­ec­u­tive or­der ti­tled “Fur­ther Mod­i­fy­ing the Rec­i­p­ro­cal Tar­iff Rates.” The an­nounce­ment by the US was part of a sweep­ing up­date to the US tar­iff sched­ule af­fect­ing 69 trad­ing part­ners world­wide. The pre­vi­ous tar­iff rate was ten per cent, which had been an­nounced in April.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cari­com Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CP­SO), the 15 per cent tar­iff could cost the coun­try near­ly $2 bil­lion (US$291.9 mil­lion) in loss­es. Un­der the ten per cent tar­iff, the CP­SO es­ti­mat­ed a loss of $1.3 bil­lion (US$194.6 mil­lion).