Expert warns against alignment to future ‘Lame duck’ Trump

Akash Sama­roo

In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Andy Knight is warn­ing that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar may be “hurt­ing” Trinidad and To­ba­go’s long-term diplo­mat­ic in­ter­ests by align­ing too close­ly with Don­ald Trump, cau­tion­ing that the US leader could soon be­come a “lame duck” pres­i­dent.

A “lame duck” is a po­lit­i­cal leader who is still in of­fice but has lost pow­er or in­flu­ence, usu­al­ly be­cause their time in of­fice is com­ing to an end.

Knight made the com­ments dur­ing a Face­book Live in­ter­view with David Ab­du­lah, where he said the Prime Min­is­ter must recog­nise that US pres­i­dents are tem­po­rary and po­lit­i­cal­ly con­strained.

“I think they have to re­alise that he’s not go­ing to be there for­ev­er,” Knight said. “Pres­i­dents don’t last for­ev­er. And in any case, by the midterm elec­tions, the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States could be a lame duck pres­i­dent too.”

The 2026 US midterm elec­tions are sched­uled for No­vem­ber 3, 2026.

Knight ar­gued that bas­ing for­eign pol­i­cy on a sin­gle po­lit­i­cal fig­ure or ad­min­is­tra­tion could leave Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­posed if there is a change of gov­ern­ment in Wash­ing­ton.

“So, by hitch­ing your wag­on to the pres­i­dent, you’re re­al­ly, re­al­ly hurt­ing your­self in the long term,” Knight said. “Be­cause there could be a change of gov­ern­ment in the next elec­tion in the US, and you might be on very bad terms with the Unit­ed States be­cause of what you’re do­ing right now.”

He added, “and not on­ly to Pres­i­dent Trump, but to the MA­GA el­e­ment of Pres­i­dent Trump, the right-wing el­e­ment of Pres­i­dent Trump.”

Knight said Trinidad and To­ba­go’s align­ment with US se­cu­ri­ty pol­i­cy has al­ready gen­er­at­ed un­ease with­in CARI­COM, warn­ing that re­gion­al uni­ty could be af­fect­ed. He has pre­vi­ous­ly cau­tioned that ten­sions linked to US ac­tions risk di­vid­ing Caribbean coun­tries and un­der­min­ing co­op­er­a­tion.

He point­ed to re­ports that Venezuela had sus­pend­ed as­pects of its en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion with Trinidad and To­ba­go, link­ing the move to ten­sions dri­ven in part by the coun­try’s prox­im­i­ty to US strate­gic in­ter­ests.

“These kinds of align­ments may be short-term,” he said. “You want to be in a po­si­tion where you’re not just align­ing to one par­tic­u­lar po­lit­i­cal par­ty in the Unit­ed States, but you have to pre­pare your­self for when that par­ty goes out of of­fice, and a new par­ty comes in.”

Knight said the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach may be un­der­min­ing re­gion­al co­he­sion at a time when stronger Cari­com in­te­gra­tion could bet­ter serve Trinidad and To­ba­go’s long-term in­ter­ests.

“The longer-term ben­e­fit would be to try to align your na­tion­al in­ter­ests with the oth­er Caribbean coun­tries,” he said.

He warned that strained re­gion­al ties could car­ry eco­nom­ic con­se­quences.

“What hap­pens if the coun­tries in the re­gion de­cide to cut off any sort of re­la­tion­ship with Trinidad and To­ba­go? That puts Trinidad in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion.”

Knight al­so point­ed to the un­pre­dictabil­i­ty of US for­eign pol­i­cy un­der Trump, say­ing re­liance on per­son­al or po­lit­i­cal align­ment car­ries risks.

“You have no guar­an­tee that Pres­i­dent Trump is go­ing to con­tin­ue to main­tain that kind of align­ment with Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Knight said. “He can turn on a dime when it comes to peo­ple that he’s sup­port­ed in the past.”

He un­der­scored the eco­nom­ic stakes, point­ing to the deep trade re­la­tion­ship be­tween Cari­com and the Unit­ed States, which he said makes main­tain­ing a bal­anced for­eign pol­i­cy crit­i­cal.