Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM af­fairs says Gov­ern­ment has been close­ly mon­i­tor­ing "an­nounce­ments and de­c­la­ra­tions in the build-up to the In­au­gu­ra­tion of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump." In a state­ment, he said while the coun­try has the ex­pe­ri­ence of en­gag­ing with a pre­vi­ous Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion from 2017 to 2021, the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion will present its own chal­lenges.

Don­ald Trump and his Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance will be sworn in to­day.

“We recog­nise that there are many new faces in the team that is be­ing for­malised now, and the hemi­spher­ic and glob­al is­sues are con­sid­er­ably more com­plex than be­fore,” Dr Browne said.

He said Trinidad and To­ba­go, along with Cari­com, are ac­tive­ly util­is­ing and ex­plor­ing all avail­able chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to en­sure the na­tion’s and the re­gion’s pri­or­i­ties are ad­vanced in Wash­ing­ton, DC, and be­yond.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley has re­peat­ed­ly said Trinidad and To­ba­go and the US were clos­er than they had ever been in the last four years of the Biden Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris met with Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley at the White House in Feb­ru­ary last year.

US Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken even vis­it­ed the coun­try from Ju­ly 5-6, 2023.

Row­ley held sev­er­al meet­ings with House Mi­nor­i­ty Leader, Ha­keem Jef­fries and with sev­er­al lead­ing mem­bers of Con­gress like Max­ine Wa­ters.

Just on Fri­day, the gov­ern­ment made his­to­ry by be­stow­ing US Am­bas­sador Can­dace Bond with the Hum­ming­bird Gold, the first non-na­tion­al am­bas­sador to re­ceive the award.

Dur­ing the first Trump Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley and then-am­bas­sador Joseph Mon­del­lo, now de­ceased, sparred open­ly and pub­licly over this coun­try’s close re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela.

The US gov­ern­ment be­lieved Maduro was an il­le­git­i­mate pres­i­dent and recog­nised Juan Gui­do as pres­i­dent. How­ev­er, Row­ley re­peat­ed­ly said the pres­i­dent is whomev­er “an­swers the phone” at Mi­raflo­res Palace in Cara­cas.