Two days af­ter sev­er­al Unit­ed States-fund­ed agen­cies and pro­grammes (par­tial­ly or whol­ly fund­ed) were alert­ed to freeze spend­ing, in­clud­ing to for­eign coun­tries, a fed­er­al judge yes­ter­day is­sued a tem­po­rary in­junc­tion against such ac­tion by the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

This, even as sev­er­al state-run agen­cies, char­i­ta­ble and hu­man­i­tar­i­an agen­cies, and even NGOs here in T&T are now jit­tery, fear­ing that their fund­ing from those US agen­cies could be en­tire­ly cut.

In the first week of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, he an­nounced that his gov­ern­ment would freeze fed­er­al grants and loans, which could po­ten­tial­ly dis­rupt health­care aid, ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes, and oth­er key ini­tia­tives across the world.

The for­eign pol­i­cy move is like­ly to im­pact on all ini­tia­tives un­der the aegis of the US­AID of­fice.

The US is T&T’s largest trad­ing part­ner and re­ceives mil­lions to sup­port ini­tia­tives in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and ed­u­ca­tion. The counter-traf­fick­ing unit in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, for ex­am­ple, is fund­ed by the US gov­ern­ment. In ad­di­tion, the US sup­ports the UN­HCR and has sup­port­ed ef­forts to get Venezue­lan mi­grants in­to the school sys­tem.

Guardian Me­dia was told that al­ready, the T&T Red Cross and the Fam­i­ly Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (FPA), which re­ceives funds from the US gov­ern­ment, have been alert­ed to the move by the US au­thor­i­ties.

In the case of the Red Cross, while the US is one of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s donors, it is the largest con­trib­u­tor.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, US Dis­trict Judge Loren L. Ali Khan halt­ed the ac­tion mo­ments be­fore it was sched­uled to take ef­fect. The ad­min­is­tra­tive stay sus­pend­ed the freeze un­til Mon­day.

Ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia, the tem­po­rary rul­ing was in­tend­ed to main­tain the sta­tus quo and does not block the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion from freez­ing fund­ing to new pro­grammes, or re­quire it to restart fund­ing that has al­ready end­ed.

Yes­ter­day’s po­ten­tial im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s 90-day freeze on al­most all for­eign aid sparked wide­spread con­cern. The tem­po­rary mora­to­ri­um was in­tend­ed to give agen­cies time to re­view whether fed­er­al grants and pro­grammes align with the ex­ec­u­tive or­ders is­sued by Trump last week.

Hu­man­i­tar­i­an or­gan­i­sa­tions have since con­tend­ed that the move could crip­ple their abil­i­ty to dis­trib­ute food, shel­ter and med­ical aid.

Lo­cal im­pact

Unit­ed Na­tions res­i­dent co­or­di­na­tor for Trinidad and To­ba­go, Joan­na Kazana, told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that as­sess­ments were un­der­way to de­ter­mine po­ten­tial im­pacts on de­vel­op­ment pro­gram­ming in the coun­try.

“The UN sec­re­tary-gen­er­al has un­der­scored the im­por­tance of en­sur­ing con­tin­ued de­liv­ery of crit­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and hu­man­i­tar­i­an ac­tiv­i­ties to sup­port the most vul­ner­a­ble. The UN sec­re­tary-gen­er­al is ready to work with the new ad­min­is­tra­tion in the Unit­ed States to chart a joint path for­ward that can pro­vide de­vel­op­ment sup­port to peo­ple world­wide who are con­fronting dif­fi­cult de­vel­op­ment chal­lenges,” Kazana said.

“Here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the UN Sys­tem con­tin­ues col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and its de­vel­op­ment part­ners to achieve the 17 Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals, in line with the 2030 Agen­da.”

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the US is the largest con­trib­u­tor to glob­al hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid, pro­vid­ing an es­ti­mat­ed $US 13.9 bil­lion in 2024, which rep­re­sents 42 per cent of all aid mon­i­tored by the Unit­ed Na­tions.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the Fam­i­ly Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (FPA) had in­di­cat­ed that the or­gan­i­sa­tion was poised to be af­fect­ed by the US de­ci­sion. How­ev­er, it has said plans are be­ing made to mit­i­gate any fall­out.

Mean­while, the US Em­bassy here in T&T al­so seemed to be in a hold­ing mode re­gard­ing fund­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties of­fered to var­i­ous en­ti­ties. In an up­date on its web­site dat­ed Jan­u­ary 27, the em­bassy urged peo­ple to “stay tuned to our web­site or so­cial me­dia ac­counts for fund­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

In a What­sapp re­sponse to ques­tions about the for­eign aid freeze yes­ter­day, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne said the tem­po­rary mora­to­ri­um will fea­ture in next month’s Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in Bar­ba­dos.

“As the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca ex­er­cis­es the sov­er­eign right to re­view and like­ly ad­just the poli­cies and pro­grammes that shape its tech­ni­cal and func­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion and as­sis­tance ini­tia­tives with the rest of the world, part­ner na­tions such as Trinidad and To­ba­go and oth­ers in the de­vel­op­ing world must en­gage in care­ful analy­sis and pru­dent and mea­sured ad­just­ment where nec­es­sary,” Browne said.

Al­so con­tact­ed, Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell ex­plained that he was not moved by the re­cent de­vel­op­ment.

“Amer­i­ca is as­sert­ing its sov­er­eign­ty, Trinidad and To­ba­go is a sov­er­eign na­tion as well, we’ve al­ways shared a close re­la­tion­ship. A large part of the di­as­po­ra re­sides with­in the Unit­ed States so at this time no, we don’t have any is­sues at all,” he said.

Re­tired di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les, yes­ter­day ex­plained that re­gion­al ter­ri­to­ries like Haiti could feel the im­pact of the freeze on for­eign aid more than T&T. He, how­ev­er, main­tained that ar­eas of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty should be kept on the radar.

“I know in the case of the po­lice they do have some pro­grammes that are de­pen­dent on as­sis­tance from the Unit­ed States but I am not sure about the scale of it.”

Sen­a­tors take cau­tious ap­proach

How­ev­er, In­de­pen­dent and Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tors have tak­en a more cau­tious ap­proach about the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s halt on spend­ing on pro­grammes, which are ex­pect­ed to be named by Feb­ru­ary 10.

An­tho­ny Vieira, SC

“I’m not a fan of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, I think he’s a dan­ger to the plan­et. For the re­gion, I think we need to start to come to­geth­er and start tak­ing col­lec­tive counter-mea­sures for what is com­ing down the pipeline, whether it is to deal with peo­ple be­ing de­port­ed back in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go, whether it is to deal with cli­mate change, the cut back of mon­ey. We may even want to con­sid­er where we have meet­ings, I think he pos­es chal­lenges but I take the view that when you have a chal­lenge you al­so have an op­por­tu­ni­ty. It is on us to start do­ing the need­ful.”

Suni­ty Ma­haraj

“It chal­lenges us to find ways, to find the re­sources. A lot of what we are look­ing for in terms of aid are prob­lems we should not have had in the first place. We have to tack­le in­sti­tu­tion­al in­er­tia, we have to be­come more pro­duc­tive as a gov­ern­ment, as a peo­ple, and we have to make bet­ter use of our funds to cut down things like crime. We would not need so much re­sources if we didn’t have all this crime, if we had bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, we would not need all these things from the Amer­i­cans.”

Paul Richards

“I don’t see it is cause for mas­sive con­cern. I’m sure there is some con­ver­sa­tion tak­ing place right now, there is no se­cret about the US and their po­si­tion with Venezuela but it’s some­thing we have to deal with and fare as best as we can, as a whole coun­try, we not go­ing to col­lapse be­cause of a pres­i­den­cy change in the US, or UK or Aus­tralia.

Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al

“We have to see what will hap­pen be­yond that 90 days and how best Trinidad and To­ba­go can po­si­tion it­self to rene­go­ti­ate to some ex­tent and still keep our­selves in a po­si­tion where we can ben­e­fit from some of the aid in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er ar­eas.”

US­AID in T&T

In 2022, the Unit­ed States Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Mis­sion to the East­ern and South­ern Caribbean (US­AID/ESC), for­mal­ly launched its satel­lite of­fice in T&T and was part of US­AID/ESC’s re­gion­al of­fice ex­pan­sion to strength­en part­ner­ships and pro­gram­ming at the lo­cal lev­el.

US­AID’s pro­gram­ming in T&T was ex­pect­ed to fo­cus on fi­nanc­ing for sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, build­ing re­silience in ar­eas such as adap­ta­tion to cli­mate change and food se­cu­ri­ty, and em­pow­er­ing youth through cit­i­zen se­cu­ri­ty and ed­u­ca­tion, to ad­vance a safe, pros­per­ous, and re­silient East­ern Caribbean re­gion.

US­AID/ESC man­ages pro­grammes in 11 coun­tries: An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Guyana, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lu­cia, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Suri­name, The Ba­hamas, and T&T.

In 2023, Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Pene­lope Beck­les and for­mer US Am­bas­sador Can­dace Bond en­gaged in dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing part­ner­ship op­por­tu­ni­ties geared to­ward the achieve­ment of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment goals and the glob­al Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals. The US gov­ern­ment pre­vi­ous­ly al­lo­cat­ed US$28 mil­lion for the as­sis­tance of ur­gent food se­cu­ri­ty needs, as well as tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance re­gard­ing use of fer­til­iz­ers, biofer­tilis­er pro­duc­tion, nu­tri­ent man­age­ment, crop fea­si­bil­i­ty, op­er­a­tional lo­gis­tics and sup­ply chain mod­el­ling.

The US Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (US­AID) al­so launched a two-year US$2.7 mil­lion grant fund to­wards re­silient agri­cul­ture ac­tiv­i­ties, to ad­dress is­sues re­lat­ing to spikes in food prices and sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions caused by the Russ­ian in­va­sion of Ukraine. Dis­cus­sions al­so in­clud­ed pos­si­ble part­ner­ships re­gard­ing tech­ni­cal sup­port, which can fall un­der the US $30 mil­lion fund, for the as­sess­ment of loss and dam­age due to neg­a­tive cli­mate im­pacts, the cre­ation of clean en­er­gy cur­ricu­lums for our ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions to en­cour­age con­tin­u­ous learn­ing.