Even as cit­i­zens en­joy the Car­ni­val Sea­son, US Pres­i­dent Trump con­tin­ues to sow the seeds of desta­bil­is­ing change at home and abroad in his first few weeks in of­fice. He has uni­lat­er­al­ly in­creased tar­iffs on friend and foe alike, vir­tu­al­ly rewrit­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al trade sys­tem. He has un­der­mined NA­TO and Eu­rope by lim­it­ing Unit­ed States se­cu­ri­ty guar­an­tees, thus rewrit­ing US for­eign pol­i­cy, which por­tends dra­mat­ic geopo­lit­i­cal change.

Elon Musk and the De­part­ment of Gov­ern­ment Ef­fi­cien­cy (DOGE) have dis­rupt­ed gov­ern­ment op­er­a­tions and the fund­ing of fed­er­al pro­grammes at home and abroad. By up­end­ing the US Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (US­AID), hu­man­i­tar­i­an projects world­wide have been cur­tailed or sub­stan­tial­ly re­duced.

The dis­en­gage­ment from the In­ter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) con­tin­ued last week with the re­moval of staff mem­bers of the US Glob­al Change Re­search Pro­gram and the Na­tion­al Ocean­ic and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion. We can ex­pect dis­en­gage­ments from oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies.

These chal­leng­ing re­al­i­ties must be fac­tored in­to the pol­i­cy frame­work that ad­dress­es this coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment chal­lenges. Trump’s changes add a new lev­el of un­cer­tain­ty to an al­ready dif­fi­cult frame­work. Fur­ther, the sil­ly sea­son will be­gin in earnest as soon as car­ni­val is over giv­en the prox­im­i­ty of a gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign. These US for­eign and do­mes­tic pol­i­cy changes promise many chal­leng­ing de­vel­op­ments, which all po­lit­i­cal par­ties must ad­dress if they are se­ri­ous about na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

Hope­ful­ly, se­ri­ous is­sues will be pri­ori­tised on po­lit­i­cal plat­forms in pref­er­ence to the marked propen­si­ty for po­lit­i­cal en­ter­tain­ment and mau­vais langue. The coun­try faces many dif­fi­cul­ties. Per­for­mance and ac­count­abil­i­ty gaps have di­min­ished pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in our in­sti­tu­tions. For ex­am­ple, the dire crime sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ues de­spite the cur­rent State of Emer­gency.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad’s com­ments last week on the pro­ce­dur­al de­fects im­pact­ing ex­am­i­na­tions and pro­mo­tions in the TTPS raise wider con­cerns about the ad­min­is­tra­tive ca­pac­i­ty and dis­ci­pline. In 2023, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty in­ves­ti­gat­ed how guns and am­mu­ni­tion seized from a deal­er went miss­ing. What else is miss­ing?

Then there is the case of the sus­pend­ed po­lice com­mis­sion­er. Can the Po­lice Ser­vice suc­cess­ful­ly man­age its in­ter­nal af­fairs and ful­fil its man­date to pro­tect and serve the pub­lic? The Fi­nance Min­is­ter has been op­ti­mistic about the econ­o­my’s per­for­mance even though this op­ti­mism is at odds with the more re­al­is­tic sce­nario he ar­tic­u­lat­ed in the af­fi­davit pre­sent­ed to sup­port the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty ap­peal in June 2024.

Re­cent­ly he spoke of the pos­i­tive im­pact of VAT and tax re­funds on thou­sands of tax­pay­ers. It is un­clear why this should be pos­i­tive news. If the sys­tem func­tioned prop­er­ly, VAT re­funds would be re­paid in months, not years. That tax­pay­ers have wait­ed years for re­funds demon­strates that re­pay­ments are be­ing sup­pressed. This re­sults in over­stat­ed gov­ern­ment rev­enue and un­der­stat­ed deficits.

The brouha­ha with the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al lends cre­dence to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s reser­va­tions ex­pressed in the two re­ports on the 2023 fi­nan­cials. The en­er­gy sec­tor re­mains the en­gine of the T&T econ­o­my and for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty be­cause we have not worked as­sid­u­ous­ly to de­vel­op al­ter­na­tives.

De­clin­ing pro­duc­tion vol­ume and soft­er in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy prices hurt the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial per­for­mance. This has been the po­si­tion since 2014 as it was in 1986. This boom-and-bust cy­cle is un­ten­able and desta­bil­is­ing in the long run. Politi­cians who are se­ri­ous about na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment must tell the coun­try what is re­quired to ad­dress these is­sues giv­en the cur­rent geopo­lit­i­cal re­al­i­ties.