US slaps T&T with 10% tariff

PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­[email protected]

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s place­ment on a list of coun­tries set to face in­creased tar­iffs from the Unit­ed States on Thurs­day has led to a blame game be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion.

T&T is among 17 coun­tries fac­ing new 10 per cent US tar­iffs as the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion im­posed fresh du­ties on im­ports from 60 trad­ing part­ners, af­ter it stat­ed that the coun­tries had not ad­e­quate­ly en­forced a ban on goods pro­duced with forced labour.

T&T, along with its Cari­com neigh­bours The Ba­hamas and Guyana, are among those af­fect­ed.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo said Gov­ern­ment was in talks with the US con­cern­ing the tar­iffs. How­ev­er, he point­ed out that Gov­ern­ment did try to ad­dress the forced labour is­sue through leg­is­la­tion.

“This and oth­er mat­ters form the ba­sis of our con­tin­ued dis­cus­sions with the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States. I leave those dis­cus­sions in the ca­pa­ble hands of our Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, Mr Sean Sobers,” Tan­coo said.

He added, “Suf­fice it to say that this is­sue was con­sid­ered in the Fi­nance Bill 2026, passed by the Gov­ern­ment but which was not sup­port­ed by the PNM.”

Tan­coo then point­ed out an ex­cerpt from the Fi­nance Bill un­der the head­ing ‘TRADE STAN­DARDS AND FORCED LABOUR GOODS’.

The ex­cerpt stat­ed, “Clause 24 amends the Cus­toms Act. It pro­hibits the im­por­ta­tion of goods pro­duced, in whole or in part, by forced labour, when des­ig­nat­ed by the Min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for trade. Trinidad and To­ba­go must not al­low our mar­ket to be­come a des­ti­na­tion for goods pro­duced in con­di­tions that vi­o­late hu­man rights. This clause places the law on the side of eth­i­cal trade and aligns our cus­toms regime with glob­al ef­forts to com­bat forced labour.”

When the mea­sure was de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate in June, Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj said it was in­tend­ed to pre­vent the coun­try from be­com­ing “a des­ti­na­tion and dump­ing ground for goods pro­duced through co­er­cion, hu­man traf­fick­ing, debt bondage, child labour, or oth­er forms of forced labour.”

He said the leg­is­la­tion would pro­tect le­git­i­mate busi­ness­es, pro­mote fair com­pe­ti­tion and strength­en eth­i­cal trade, while pre­vent­ing un­fair­ly pro­duced goods from en­ter­ing the lo­cal mar­ket.

Re­spond­ing to Tan­coo’s com­ments yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion MP and for­mer Fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert ex­pressed con­fu­sion over Tan­coo’s at­tri­bu­tion of blame to his par­ty.

“How? The UNC has a huge ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment and the Bill was passed, and as­sent­ed to long ago,” Im­bert said in re­la­tion to Tan­coo blam­ing the PNM for the is­sue.

He added, “It is there­fore im­pos­si­ble for any­one in the UNC to log­i­cal­ly or le­git­i­mate­ly claim that the PNM’s ob­jec­tion to the re­cent Fi­nance Bill is re­spon­si­ble for the im­po­si­tion of tar­iffs. That is a form of mad­ness. We are not in gov­ern­ment and will not be un­til 2030 un­less an ear­ly elec­tion us called. The sit­ting Gov­ern­ment passed the Fi­nance Bill and it has been law since June 25th, 2026. One month ago!”

Al­so com­ment­ing on the is­sue, Op­po­si­tion MP Bri­an Man­ning, a for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, said the Op­po­si­tion did not sup­port the Fi­nance Bill be­cause of the forced labour pro­vi­sions.

“The Fi­nance Bill 2026 was not sup­port­ed be­cause it con­cen­trates sweep­ing amend­ments across more than thir­ty laws in­to a sin­gle bill, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for cit­i­zens, busi­ness­es and even leg­is­la­tors to ful­ly com­pre­hend the wide-rang­ing im­pli­ca­tions. While framed as mod­erni­sa­tion, the bill sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creas­es penal­ties, ex­pands reg­u­la­to­ry pow­ers, and al­ters tax treat­ment in ways that may raise com­pli­ance bur­dens with­out clear­ly demon­strat­ing pro­por­tion­al eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit or ad­e­quate pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion,” said Man­ning.

“If this UNC Gov­ern­ment didn’t at­tempt to com­min­gle so many dis­parate is­sues un­der the um­brel­la of a sin­gle bill then maybe it would have been sup­port­ed by the Op­po­si­tion.”

He con­tin­ued, “They take an oth­er­wise sen­si­ble and straight­for­ward piece of leg­is­la­tion and then in­sert dan­ger­ous claus­es, such as Sec­tion 34, of which they know the Op­po­si­tion could nev­er sup­port. They on­ly have the poor draft­ing of their own reck­less leg­is­la­tion to blame.”

CEO and tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of the Cari­com Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CP­SO) Patrick An­toine al­so raised con­cern about the mat­ter when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day.

He said, “Cari­com con­tin­ues to be ex­treme­ly con­cerned about the im­pact of the tar­iffs on our eco­nom­ic per­for­mance, on our in­ter­sec­toral link­ages, on our ex­port thrust, be­cause the US is one of our key mar­kets.”

An­toine said the is­sue was wor­ry­ing for the Caribbean pri­vate sec­tor, which he said is “fac­ing sub­stan­tial eco­nom­ic pres­sures at this time,” es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the fact that the Unit­ed States is one of the re­gion’s ma­jor trad­ing part­ners.

Min­istry: T&T got low­est rate and ex­emp­tions

The Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs is dis­miss­ing re­ports that Trinidad and To­ba­go has been placed on a list of coun­tries fac­ing high­er tar­iffs on ex­ports to the Unit­ed States, say­ing the coun­try in­stead se­cured the low­est tar­iff rate im­posed un­der a ma­jor US trade in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

In a state­ment last night, the min­istry said T&T has not been sub­ject­ed to a 12.5 per cent tar­iff by the US. In­stead, it said the tar­iff ap­plic­a­ble to lo­cal ex­ports has been re­duced from 15 per cent, an­nounced in Au­gust 2025, to 10 per cent fol­low­ing months of en­gage­ment with US of­fi­cials.

The clar­i­fi­ca­tion came amid re­ports that T&T was among coun­tries fac­ing in­creased tar­iffs un­der a Unit­ed States Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive (US­TR) Sec­tion 301 in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, the US launched the in­ves­ti­ga­tion on March 12, 2026, in­to its 60 largest trad­ing part­ners to ex­am­ine whether their laws and prac­tices ad­e­quate­ly pro­hib­it­ed the im­por­ta­tion of goods pro­duced with forced labour. While T&T was not specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed, it was re­quired to par­tic­i­pate be­cause it falls with­in the top 60 US trad­ing part­ners.

The min­istry said the US­TR ini­tial­ly pro­posed im­pos­ing tar­iffs of up to 12.5 per cent on goods from each of the coun­tries un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­fore invit­ing sub­mis­sions and hold­ing pub­lic hear­ings ear­li­er this month.

It said For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers par­tic­i­pat­ed in what it de­scribed as high­ly tech­ni­cal dis­cus­sions with the US­TR be­tween May and Ju­ly, in­clud­ing meet­ings in Wash­ing­ton, DC on May 14 and Ju­ly 16.

The min­istry al­so point­ed to leg­isla­tive ac­tion tak­en by Par­lia­ment on June 12, when amend­ments to the Cus­toms Act were passed to pro­hib­it the im­por­ta­tion of goods pro­duced through forced labour. The leg­is­la­tion was pi­lot­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump an­nounced on Ju­ly 23 that T&T would be among a group of coun­tries sub­ject to a 10 per cent tar­iff, while a sep­a­rate list of coun­tries would face the high­er 12.5 per cent rate.

The min­istry said T&T re­ceived the low­er rate be­cause of mea­sures tak­en to pro­hib­it the im­por­ta­tion of goods pro­duced with forced labour.

It added that the US­TR al­so agreed to ex­empt sev­er­al ma­jor T&T ex­ports from the tar­iffs al­to­geth­er. Those prod­ucts in­clude crude pe­tro­le­um, liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas, an­hy­drous am­mo­nia, urea, urea am­mo­ni­um mix­tures in so­lu­tion and iron pel­lets. The min­istry said those prod­ucts ac­count for more than 85 per cent of T&T’s ex­ports to the US and will con­tin­ue to at­tract a ze­ro per cent du­ty.

The min­istry main­tained that the out­come re­flect­ed Gov­ern­ment’s proac­tive en­gage­ment with US au­thor­i­ties dur­ing the Sec­tion 301 process.