Over the past few weeks, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has an­nounced a se­ries of tar­iffs on big economies, which has caused con­cern in this coun­try, and around the world, due to the trade agree­ments on goods and ve­hi­cles.

In­ter­na­tion­al me­dia last week re­port­ed that Trump ini­tial­ly said he was im­pos­ing a 25 per cent tar­iff on all cars com­ing in­to the coun­try.

The White House lat­er clar­i­fied that for­eign au­to parts would al­so be taxed at the 25 per cent rate even if the ve­hi­cles they go in­to are as­sem­bled in the US.

How­ev­er, com­pa­nies that im­port ve­hi­cles un­der the Unit­ed States-Mex­i­co-Cana­da Agree­ment (USM­CA) will get spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion un­til the Com­merce De­part­ment es­tab­lish­es a process for levy­ing the 25 per cent du­ties, the White House said.

Asked about the glob­al tar­iff sce­nario at a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence last Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said the bi­lat­er­al talks with Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio last Wednes­day pre­sent­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to get the hear­ing to put for­ward T&T’s ar­gu­ment on how things can af­fect the Cari­com re­gion.

“There was a com­mit­ment to con­tin­ue com­mu­ni­cat­ing as life un­folds and that is the best com­mit­ment you can get. I al­so think we are on a much small­er scale. For ex­am­ple, on the ship­ping side, the US has dis­cre­tion as to how they ap­ply these things. So, on Wednes­day was a good day to hear our side,” Young out­lined.

As con­cerns loom, Trop­i­cal Ship­ping pres­i­dent and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Tim Mar­tin tes­ti­fied last Mon­day be­fore the of­fice of the US Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, that the pro­posed tar­iffs in ad­di­tion to fees the US Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing im­pos­ing on Chi­nese-built ships would se­vere­ly af­fect Amer­i­can-owned ship­ping com­pa­nies as well as US ex­porters and Caribbean busi­ness­es.

In a news re­lease, Trop­i­cal Ship­ping said the pro­posed tar­iffs in­clude a flat US$1 mil­lion port fee on Chi­nese-built ves­sels en­ter­ing US ports. “The US ship­ping in­dus­try serv­ing the Caribbean can­not ab­sorb the ad­di­tion­al costs of the pro­posed port fees, which would have sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic con­se­quences,” Mar­tin tes­ti­fied. “In­stead of strength­en­ing Amer­i­can com­pet­i­tive­ness, these port fees would push Amer­i­can-owned car­ri­ers like Trop­i­cal out of busi­ness.”

Trop­i­cal Ship­ping op­er­ates out of the Port of Palm Beach Flori­da, and nine of its 19 ves­sels were built in Chi­na up to 25 years ago. Mar­tin asked the US­TR to ex­empt Amer­i­can-owned and head­quar­tered ves­sel op­er­a­tors from pro­posed fees and to ap­ply the tar­iffs on fu­ture ships built in Chi­na, but not on ves­sels that are al­ready in ser­vice.

With re­spect to Trop­i­cal Ship­ping’s role in the Caribbean re­gion, Mar­tin said the av­er­age ves­sel serv­ing the re­gion car­ries 1,100 twen­ty foot-equiv­a­lent units (TEUs.)

“If the fees in the pro­posed ac­tion are ap­plied to these small­er ves­sels, we would have to dou­ble our freight rates, with an av­er­age in­crease of US$2,500 per con­tain­er. An in­crease of this mag­ni­tude would be cat­a­stroph­ic for Amer­i­can ex­porters and Caribbean con­sumers. As a com­par­i­son, ap­ply­ing the pro­posed US$1 mil­lion fee to a ves­sel that calls on a sin­gle US port di­rect­ly from Chi­na car­ry­ing 16,000 TEUs would in­crease the cost per 40-foot con­tain­er by on­ly US$125,” the pres­i­dent and CEO de­tailed.

US com­pa­nies hurt

Ear­li­er in the week Pres­i­dent Trump an­nounced a 25 per cent tar­iff across the board on any coun­try buy­ing oil or gas from Venezuela.

In a Truth So­cial post, Trump said Venezuela has been “very hos­tile” to the US., and coun­tries pur­chas­ing oil from it will be forced to pay the tar­iff on all their trade to the US start­ing April 2.

The tar­iffs would most like­ly add to the tax­es fac­ing Chi­na, which in 2023 bought 68 per cent of the oil ex­port­ed by Venezuela, ac­cord­ing to a 2024 analy­sis by the U.S. En­er­gy In­for­ma­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Spain, In­dia, Rus­sia, Sin­ga­pore, and Viet­nam are al­so among the coun­tries re­ceiv­ing oil from Venezuela, the re­port shows.

Speak­ing on the is­sue, for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that this coun­try does not pur­chase oil and gas from Venezuela at this time.

“I think what is of con­cern is what is the im­pact go­ing for­ward on the Drag­on gas deal that we are talk­ing about and the Co­quina-Man­akin gas field. In that re­gard, we have to be mind­ful that it is gov­erned by an OFAC li­cence. Un­til that is re­voked, I don’t see that be­ing an is­sue, be­cause that li­cence as well, if we go back to the track and gas, for ex­am­ple, we are speak­ing about an ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion li­cense, a 30-year li­cence with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment for the de­vel­op­ment of that field, for the ex­trac­tion and de­vel­op­ment of that field,” Seep­er­sad-Bachan ex­plained.

She said a sim­i­lar sce­nario ap­plies to the Co­quina-Man­akin field as well and that would be more of a con­cern as this is an in­di­ca­tor as to what will be tak­ing place come Oc­to­ber, when the gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States would be re­quired to ei­ther the OFAC li­cence or al­low it to lapse..

“There was a re­port in in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia which said that Shell says there is an ex­pec­ta­tion that it would be pro­duc­ing nat­ur­al gas at Venezuela’s Drag­on gas field and ex­port­ing to T&T ear­li­er than the tar­get­ed pro­duc­tion date of 2027, prob­a­bly a whole year ear­li­er, 2026.”

Seep­er­sad-Bachan al­so not­ed that this coun­try should not have been in this po­si­tion where all of its eggs were in one bas­ket. She ques­tioned why this coun­try didn’t take ag­gres­sive steps to pur­sue the de­vel­op­ment of the deep­wa­ter acreage with­in T&T’s mar­itime bound­aries.

Al­so weigh­ing in on the mat­ter was en­er­gy ex­pert, An­tho­ny Paul, who said it is pro­posed that T&T and Shell would pro­duce nat­ur­al gas from the Drag­on fiels and sell it... in re­turn, T&T pays Venezuela a roy­al­ty.

“Venezuela isn’t sell­ing us gas. We are ex­tract­ing the gas, and we are sell­ing it, and we are pay­ing Venezuela for the right to ex­tract the gas. What does he mean by pay­ing Venezuela for gas and oil? Chi­na buys oil from Venezuela. So, Chi­na will pay for the oil. There’s a slight dif­fer­ence in the lan­guage and how it’s be­ing in­ter­pret­ed,” he out­lined.

Paul added that, due to geopol­i­tics, he can­not say for sure if the pro­posed tar­iffs on coun­tries that buy Venezue­lan gas would af­fect the Drag­on gas deal.