US will treat us with contempt, says Watson

Raphael John-Lall

Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) econ­o­mist Patrick Wat­son says he is “fright­ened” by some of the ac­tions the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion in Port-of-Spain is tak­ing as he not­ed that T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is po­si­tion­ing her­self as a faith­ful “dis­ci­ple” of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

He al­so made it clear he has lit­tle faith that T&T would reap eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits from its close al­liance with the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Wat­son shared his views on the lat­est de­ci­sions the Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing both re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“We are al­low­ing our­selves to be re­colonised by the US. That is ac­count­ing for a lot of the ac­tions. It is al­most as if the Prime Min­is­ter is work­ing on in­struc­tions on how to deal with coun­tries that don’t ap­pear to be tow­ing the Wash­ing­ton line,” he said.

He was re­act­ing to T&T Prime Min­is­ter’s lat­est threats to re­duce fund­ing to Cari­com over the reap­point­ment of Dr Car­la Bar­nett as the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of Cari­com.

T&T cur­rent­ly pro­vides 22 per cent of Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at’s an­nu­al bud­get, ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers, who said T&T’s al­lo­ca­tion to Cari­com and its en­ti­ties is to $127 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

Wat­son al­so does not ex­pect T&T to reap any ma­jor eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits from its re­la­tion­ship with the US un­like Ar­genti­na which is re­ceiv­ing US$40 bil­lion in fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance and will see a qua­dru­pling of beef ex­ports from Ar­genti­na in­to the US mar­kets.

“The US has a lot more to gain from its al­liance with Ar­genti­na, which is a big coun­try, than with T&T. I don’t ex­pect that T&T would be of any great con­cern to the US. They will treat us with con­tempt.”

He al­so said T&T’s eco­nom­ic in­flu­ence in the re­gion is too im­por­tant for oth­er Cari­com mem­bers to boy­cott its goods.

“I don’t think there will be a boy­cott of T&T’s goods. I don’t think this will af­fect the trade be­cause T&T is too im­por­tant to Cari­com for them to do any­thing about it. T&T is now be­hav­ing as the US as those Cari­com coun­tries de­pend on T&T’s ex­ports of goods. It is pos­si­ble that they may want to take ac­tion against T&T but it will not work as T&T is too im­por­tant to them in the wider scheme of things.”

He blames T&T’s Gov­ern­ment close re­la­tion­ship with the ad­min­is­tra­tion of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump for the rup­ture in Cari­com.

“Our man­u­fac­tur­ers de­pend on Cari­com so we should have no in­ter­est in an­noy­ing the mem­bers of Cari­com. T&T may be able to get away with it as the oth­er mem­ber states buy a lot of our goods while T&T al­so buys some of their goods. I think a lot of this is con­trived as the T&T Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to tow­ing the line of the Unit­ed States. There has al­ways been a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion in Cari­com and T&T is try­ing to put the re­gion un­der man­ners much like the style of Trump and the Unit­ed States’ tra­di­tion­al al­lies in Eu­rope,” Wat­son said.

Cari­com’s fail­ings

How­ev­er, he said while some of the Gov­ern­ment’a poli­cies are ques­tion­able, he agreed with the Gov­ern­ment that Cari­com has failed to de­liv­er eco­nom­ic and oth­er ben­e­fits over the last few decades.

“A lot of what the UNC Gov­ern­ment is say­ing about Cari­com is not un­true. There has al­ways been lot of talk and lit­tle ac­tion from Cari­com. They start­ed talk­ing about a Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my since 1992. Where are we with that to­day? A life­time has al­ready gone. I wrote an eco­nom­ics pa­per back in the 1980s and I said it back then, there is a lot of talk and no ac­tion. Look at the pro­posed re­gion­al mon­e­tary sys­tem which fell apart. To put sim­ply, Cari­com has not de­liv­ered on its promis­es”

He said what the Gov­ern­ment is do­ing now runs counter to some of T&T’s tra­di­tion­al prac­tices in for­eign re­la­tions. Cit­ing Cu­ba as an ex­am­ple, he said the North Caribbean, Span­ish-speak­ing oun­try is un­der US sanc­tions but has de­vel­op­men­tal co-op­er­a­tion with T&T in the med­ical are­na.

He al­so is al­so not op­ti­mistic that this coun­try would ben­e­fit from the po­ten­tial Drag­on gas field agree­ment with Venezuela de­spite T&T’s close re­la­tion­ship with the US.

“There is a lot of bad blood be­tween Venezuela’s act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez and T&T. Maduro is gone but the fun­da­men­tal regime re­mains in place.”

Last week, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) CEO Ramesh Ramdeen told Guardian Me­dia that the TTMA sees the Cari­com mar­ket as a very im­por­tant one, an in­te­gral mar­ket to­wards T&T’s eco­nom­ic sus­tain­abil­i­ty and growth as it rep­re­sents be­tween 70 per cent to 80 per cent of all non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing ex­ports.

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Kennedy Swarats­ingh has tak­en a dif­fer­ent po­si­tion, telling a TTMA con­fer­ence last week that T&T should ex­pand be­yond tra­di­tion­al mar­kets.

Re­gion­al di­vi­sion

For­mer min­is­ter of trade Vas­ant Bharath, who is now an in­ter­na­tion­al con­sul­tant, told the Busi­ness Guardian that from his per­spec­tive, as a long-stand­ing ad­vo­cate of Caribbean in­te­gra­tion, the is­sue is less about the in­di­vid­ual and more about the sig­nal T&T is send­ing to the re­gion at a dif­fi­cult and del­i­cate time.

He ar­gued that the reap­point­ment of Bar­nett should or­di­nar­i­ly have been treat­ed as a rou­tine in­sti­tu­tion­al de­ci­sion with­in Cari­com and added that when a lead­ing mem­ber state like T&T pub­licly ex­press­es dis­sat­is­fac­tion, es­pe­cial­ly in Par­lia­ment, it el­e­vates what might have been qui­et diplo­ma­cy in­to a re­gion­al po­lit­i­cal mo­ment.

“Worse, is the fram­ing around fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tion of $127 mil­lion which in­tro­duces a share­hold­er log­ic in­to what has his­tor­i­cal­ly been a part­ner­ship of sov­er­eign equals. Cari­com was nev­er de­signed to op­er­ate on a ‘pay-to-in­flu­ence’ prin­ci­ple. Rais­ing it pub­licly risks cre­at­ing un­ease among small­er states, who may in­ter­pret it as an at­tempt to lever­age eco­nom­ic weight for po­lit­i­cal out­comes. That per­cep­tion alone is in­flam­ma­to­ry and can strain co­he­sion.’”

Sec­ond­ly, he said any­one fa­mil­iar with diplo­ma­cy will un­der­stand that, from an in­te­gra­tionist per­spec­tive, tone mat­ters as much as sub­stance.

“Cari­com’s progress, whether in trade lib­er­al­i­sa­tion, func­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion, or co­or­di­na­tion of for­eign pol­i­cy, has al­ways de­pend­ed on con­sen­sus-build­ing and qui­et ne­go­ti­a­tion. Pub­lic crit­i­cism of lead­er­ship de­ci­sions can erode trust with­in the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment, mak­ing it hard­er to ad­vance al­ready frag­ile ini­tia­tives like the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME). This is just com­mon sense.”

He warned of re­al eco­nom­ic con­se­quences for T&T’s Gov­ern­ment’s er­rors.

He said re­gion­al trade and in­te­gra­tion are not just le­gal frame­works, they are un­der­pinned by po­lit­i­cal good­will. If ten­sions es­ca­late, they can slow de­ci­sion-mak­ing on:

* Re­moval of non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers

* Har­mon­i­sa­tion of stan­dards

* Move­ment of labour and cap­i­tal

“In a re­gion al­ready fac­ing ex­ter­nal eco­nom­ic shocks and glob­al un­cer­tain­ty, any weak­en­ing of col­lec­tive re­solve risks un­der­min­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness. We must al­so bear in mind that Trinidad and To­ba­go is the sin­gle largest ben­e­fi­cia­ry of trade in the re­gion, with ex­ports to the re­gion top­ping $9 bil­lion in 2024 and cre­at­ing thou­sands of jobs in T&T.”

He al­so said dis­agree­ment with­in Cari­com, how­ev­er, is not new as mem­ber states have al­ways had dif­fer­ing views on lead­er­ship, pol­i­cy di­rec­tion, and bur­den-shar­ing. The is­sue is how these dis­agree­ments are ex­pressed. Con­struc­tive dis­sent, han­dled through in­ter­nal mech­a­nisms, can strength­en in­sti­tu­tions. Pub­lic con­fronta­tion, un­der bright lights, es­pe­cial­ly when tied to fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tions, can do the op­po­site.

“At a time when re­gion­al uni­ty is al­ready un­der strain and the world is in tur­moil, pub­lic pos­tur­ing and pol­i­tick­ing, es­pe­cial­ly tied to fi­nan­cial weight, can weak­en the very in­te­gra­tion move­ment T&T has his­tor­i­cal­ly cham­pi­oned.”