Business groups welcome lower US tariffs; analysts warn of global trade risks

An­drea Perez-Sobers & Shal­iza Has­sanali

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s two largest busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions have wel­comed the re­duc­tion in Unit­ed States tar­iffs on lo­cal ex­ports, de­scrib­ing the move as a boost for ex­porters while warn­ing that busi­ness­es must con­tin­ue mon­i­tor­ing an in­creas­ing­ly un­cer­tain glob­al trad­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce yes­ter­day an­nounced the cre­ation of a Trade Da­ta Desk to as­sess the im­pact of chang­ing in­ter­na­tion­al trade poli­cies af­ter wel­com­ing con­fir­ma­tion that this coun­try’s ex­ports now qual­i­fy for the low­est ap­plic­a­ble tar­iff rate un­der the Unit­ed States’ Sec­tion 301 mea­sures.

On Fri­day, T&T was named among 17 coun­tries fac­ing the 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.

The Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs ex­plained that T&T se­cured the low­est tar­iff rate im­posed un­der a ma­jor US trade in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

It 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.

Yes­ter­day, the Cham­ber said se­cur­ing the low­er tar­iff rate was a promis­ing de­vel­op­ment but main­tain­ing that po­si­tion would re­quire con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion and co­op­er­a­tion be­tween T&T and the Unit­ed States, backed by ev­i­dence-based en­gage­ment as glob­al trade con­di­tions con­tin­ue to evolve.

It said the Trade Da­ta Desk’s im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty would be to eval­u­ate the im­pli­ca­tions of the new US tar­iff mea­sures on busi­ness­es across the econ­o­my be­fore ex­pand­ing in­to a per­ma­nent mech­a­nism to mon­i­tor emerg­ing in­ter­na­tion­al trade de­vel­op­ments.

The Cham­ber said the desk will col­lect in­for­ma­tion from busi­ness­es to as­sess com­mer­cial im­pacts, iden­ti­fy the sec­tors most af­fect­ed and de­vel­op prac­ti­cal rec­om­men­da­tions for both the pri­vate sec­tor and Gov­ern­ment.

Its find­ings will be pub­lished in a Trade Im­pact Re­port aimed at strength­en­ing ad­vo­ca­cy, im­prov­ing pol­i­cy re­spons­es and en­hanc­ing T&T’s com­pet­i­tive­ness.

It en­cour­aged com­pa­nies to sup­port their sub­mis­sions with rel­e­vant da­ta or doc­u­men­ta­tion where pos­si­ble.

The Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AM­CHAM T&T) al­so wel­comed the an­nounce­ment by the Of­fice of the Unit­ed States Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, say­ing some prod­ucts from T&T will now be sub­ject to a 10 per cent US tar­iff in­stead of the pre­vi­ous­ly im­posed 15 per cent rate. At the same time, key petro­chem­i­cal ex­ports have been ex­empt­ed from the lat­est US trade mea­sures.

AM­CHAM de­scribed the de­vel­op­ment as a pos­i­tive out­come for the coun­try’s ex­port sec­tor and wider econ­o­my, not­ing that T&T is now sub­ject to the low­est tar­iff rate ap­plied un­der the US re­view.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said the re­moval of tar­iffs on sev­er­al petro­chem­i­cal prod­ucts pro­vides sig­nif­i­cant re­lief for one of the coun­try’s most im­por­tant ex­port in­dus­tries.

AM­CHAM al­so high­light­ed its own en­gage­ment on the is­sue, say­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Ni­rad Tewarie met with Unit­ed States De­part­ment of Agri­cul­ture Un­der Sec­re­tary Luke J Lind­berg in June to dis­cuss the pro­posed petro­chem­i­cal tar­iffs. It said Lind­berg com­mit­ted to re­view­ing the mat­ter.

Mean­while, In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les and po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath yes­ter­day shared vary­ing views on T&T low­er­ing its tar­iffs on ex­ports to the Unit­ed States from 15 to 10 per cent.

Gon­za­les said any de­crease or in­crease in T&T’s tar­iffs was not wel­come news.

“But I don’t think I am hap­py with any tar­iffs at all....any tar­iffs like 10 or 15 per cent.”

Gon­za­les said US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is look­ing af­ter his coun­try’s in­ter­ests.

“Don’t think be­cause you are an Amer­i­can al­ly that you are not go­ing to be spared of these things.”

In the mean­time, he said T&T has to con­tin­ue ne­go­ti­at­ing with the US.

Ra­goonath said the coun­try con­tin­ues to be hope­ful that tar­iffs are re­moved al­to­geth­er.

“That would ben­e­fit the coun­try and the ex­porters. The point about it is, I don’t ex­pect any coun­try to sim­ply re­move all their tar­iffs from oth­er states be­cause, in a way, it would sug­gest that there’s a dif­fer­ent lev­el of ne­go­ti­a­tions tak­ing place.”

Re­goonath said the re­la­tion­ship T&T has with the US con­tin­ues to be a pos­i­tive one.

Yes­ter­day, a re­lease from the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs stat­ed that the ac­tions of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar had helped to low­er tar­iffs from 15 to 10 per cent on ex­ports from T&T to the US.