AMCHAM T&T CEO presses US. official on petrochemical tariffs

AM­CHAM T&T Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Ni­rad Tewarie en­gaged in high-lev­el dis­cus­sions with Luke Lind­berg, Un­der Sec­re­tary for Trade and For­eign Agri­cul­tur­al Af­fairs at the Unit­ed States De­part­ment of Agri­cul­ture (US­DA), on the is­sue of tar­iffs im­posed on petro­chem­i­cal ex­ports from Trinidad and To­ba­go to the Unit­ed States.

The meet­ing took place dur­ing the Busi­ness Fu­ture of the Amer­i­c­as (BFA) Con­fer­ence, held in Quito, Ecuador, from June 4 to 6. Or­gan­ised by AM­CHAM Quito Ecuador, the As­so­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­can Cham­bers of Com­merce in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (AAC­CLA), and the U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce, the event con­vened busi­ness lead­ers, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials to ad­dress trade, in­vest­ment, en­er­gy tran­si­tion, and re­gion­al com­pet­i­tive­ness.

Tewarie em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of T&T’s petro­chem­i­cal ex­ports in sup­port­ing U.S. agri­cul­ture, not­ing that the coun­try has long been a re­li­able sup­pli­er of key in­puts used by Amer­i­can farm­ers. “Since T&T im­ports none of these prod­ucts, the is­sue of reci­procity does not arise. T&T and the U.S. share a very strong and spe­cial re­la­tion­ship so, we hope this is­sue can be ad­dressed in that con­text,” he said.

He added that Lind­berg demon­strat­ed a strong un­der­stand­ing of the mat­ter and com­mit­ted to re­view­ing the tar­iffs while ac­knowl­edg­ing the strate­gic re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two na­tions. Tewarie stressed that en­sur­ing de­ci­sion-mak­ers rec­og­nize the mu­tu­al ben­e­fits of this trade re­la­tion­ship is crit­i­cal, as the com­pet­i­tive­ness of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor di­rect­ly im­pacts both the lo­cal econ­o­my and the U.S. agri­cul­tur­al val­ue chain.

The CEO high­light­ed that AM­CHAM T&T’s ad­vo­ca­cy com­ple­ments on­go­ing ef­forts by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and af­fect­ed com­pa­nies. He al­so point­ed to the val­ue of AM­CHAM T&T’s mem­ber­ship in AAC­CLA, which pro­vides ac­cess to in­flu­en­tial busi­ness and pol­i­cy lead­ers across the Amer­i­c­as.

AM­CHAM T&T ex­pressed grat­i­tude to AAC­CLA and AM­CHAM Quito Ecuador, led by Ex­ec­u­tive Pres­i­dent Fe­lipe Es­pinosa, for host­ing a suc­cess­ful fo­rum that fos­tered re­gion­al di­a­logue. The or­ga­ni­za­tion reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to ad­vanc­ing poli­cies and part­ner­ships that strength­en trade, in­vest­ment, and com­pet­i­tive­ness while safe­guard­ing the in­ter­ests of its mem­bers.