US ambassador nominee concerned about T&T’s SoEs

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Jen­nifer John­son-Car­roll, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s nom­i­nee for the post of am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go, says the re­peat­ed States of Emer­gency “doesn’t bode well” for T&T’s on­go­ing bat­tle against crime.

The T&T-born US na­tion­al al­so point­ed to the coun­try’s porous bor­ders and de­clin­ing en­er­gy pro­duc­tion as key is­sues shap­ing the US-Trinidad and To­ba­go re­la­tion­ship, high­light­ing on­go­ing se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion and sup­port for en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment.

She made the com­ments dur­ing her con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing be­fore the Sen­ate For­eign Re­la­tions Com­mit­tee yes­ter­day.

Ques­tioned by com­mit­tee chair­man Sen­a­tor Jim Risch about the sta­bil­i­ty of T&T’s Gov­ern­ment, John­son-Car­roll de­clined to of­fer a de­fin­i­tive as­sess­ment be­fore tak­ing up the post.

“The gov­ern­ment, as far as the sta­bil­i­ty, I can­not speak to that. If con­firmed, get­ting down to the re­gion and hav­ing more di­a­logue with post as well as the gov­ern­ment to find out more about that,” she said.

How­ev­er, she ac­knowl­edged con­cern over the coun­try’s se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion.

“I do know that they have had sev­er­al emer­gency or­ders, which doesn’t bode well with re­gards to the crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties that’s been oc­cur­ring for a num­ber of years.”

She said she hoped that, if con­firmed, in­for­ma­tion gath­ered on the ground would help shape strate­gic rec­om­men­da­tions for the Pres­i­dent, the State De­part­ment and Con­gress to ad­dress those chal­lenges.

Risch al­so asked about the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the coun­tries. John­son-Car­roll said the part­ner­ship was strong, par­tic­u­lar­ly on se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion.

“Right now, the Unit­ed States is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a good re­la­tion­ship with the coun­try of Trinidad and To­ba­go, in that they’ve been very sup­port­ive of the Caribbean Basin Se­cu­ri­ty Ini­tia­tive,” she said.

John­son-Car­roll said T&T recog­nised it had “a porous bor­der” and re­quired ad­di­tion­al re­sources to com­bat il­lic­it hu­man and nar­cotics traf­fick­ing.

She al­so point­ed to en­er­gy as an­oth­er ma­jor area of co­op­er­a­tion.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, we have an is­sue with re­gards to en­er­gy, of their pro­duc­tion re­duc­ing, and the Unit­ed States is com­mit­ted to mov­ing for­ward with a li­cence that has been ac­cept­ed for a sec­tor in the Caribbean area be­tween Venezuela and Trinidad to help the coun­try ex­plore for ad­di­tion­al re­sources,” she said.

She said such co­op­er­a­tion would al­so ex­pand busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties for Amer­i­can com­pa­nies.

“We can see that Trinidad and To­ba­go is com­mit­ted to work­ing with the Unit­ed States to in­crease eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties, in­crease oil and gas ex­plo­ration, as well as utilise our as­sis­tance to help com­bat some of those il­lic­it traf­fick­ing.”

Ear­li­er in the hear­ing, John­son-Car­roll de­scribed her nom­i­na­tion as deeply per­son­al.

“This nom­i­na­tion holds spe­cial per­son­al mean­ing for me. I was born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. I im­mi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States at the age of eight, and I’ve car­ried a deep con­nec­tion to Trinidad and To­ba­go through­out my life and ca­reer.”

She high­light­ed her 20-year US Navy ca­reer, ris­ing from en­list­ed jet me­chan­ic to lieu­tenant com­man­der, be­fore serv­ing as Flori­da’s 18th lieu­tenant gov­er­nor.

John­son-Car­roll told sen­a­tors she would fo­cus on four pri­or­i­ties if con­firmed.

Her first pri­or­i­ty, she said, would be en­sur­ing the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of Amer­i­can cit­i­zens liv­ing in or trav­el­ling to T&T. Sec­ond­ly, she pledged to deep­en eco­nom­ic ties by pro­mot­ing Amer­i­can ex­ports, in­vest­ment and en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, while sup­port­ing T&T’s ef­forts to di­ver­si­fy its econ­o­my. She al­so iden­ti­fied se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion as a ma­jor ob­jec­tive.

Recog­nis­ing that eco­nom­ic and se­cu­ri­ty in­ter­ests were in­ter­twined, she said she would work close­ly with T&T to strength­en co­op­er­a­tion through the Caribbean Basin Se­cu­ri­ty Ini­tia­tive, the Amer­i­c­as Car­tel Coali­tion and the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as ini­tia­tive.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go is a re­gion­al leader on se­cu­ri­ty and a strong part­ner in the fight against transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime,” she said.

John­son-Car­roll said she was com­mit­ted to work­ing with T&T “to stop il­lic­it nar­co-traf­fick­ing that cor­rupts the lives and liveli­hood of both our cit­i­zens.”

Her fourth pri­or­i­ty, she said, would be ad­vanc­ing Amer­i­can sov­er­eign­ty by strength­en­ing bor­der se­cu­ri­ty and re­gion­al mi­gra­tion co­op­er­a­tion to pre­vent il­le­gal mi­gra­tion while fa­cil­i­tat­ing law­ful move­ment through­out the Caribbean.

The hear­ing al­so fo­cused on T&T’s record in coun­ter­ing vi­o­lent ex­trem­ism.

Sen­a­tor Jacky Rosen not­ed that T&T has the high­est per-capi­ta rate of ISIS re­cruit­ment in the West­ern Hemi­sphere and ques­tioned whether cuts by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion to pro­grammes aimed at coun­ter­ing vi­o­lent ex­trem­ism could un­der­mine US na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­ter­ests.

Rosen asked whether John­son-Car­roll be­lieved such pro­grammes should con­tin­ue to re­ceive fund­ing and whether she would ad­vo­cate for re­sources to pre­vent rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion in T&T.

John­son-Car­roll said this is­sue was sig­nif­i­cant but stopped short of di­rect­ly en­dors­ing ad­di­tion­al fund­ing.

Pressed re­peat­ed­ly by Sha­heen on whether rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion re­quired ded­i­cat­ed fund­ing, John­son-Car­roll in­stead re­ferred to ex­ist­ing ini­tia­tives un­der the Bu­reau of In­ter­na­tion­al Nar­cotics and Law En­force­ment Af­fairs (INL) and the Caribbean Basin Se­cu­ri­ty Ini­tia­tive (CB­SI). She said she looked for­ward to as­sess­ing avail­able re­sources if con­firmed.

John­son-Car­roll was nom­i­nat­ed by Pres­i­dent Trump on June 2, be­com­ing the first T&T-born woman se­lect­ed to serve as US am­bas­sador to T&T. Her nom­i­na­tion now ad­vances through the Sen­ate con­fir­ma­tion process be­fore a fi­nal vote by the full Sen­ate.

The last US Am­bas­sador to T&T was Can­dace Bond, who served from De­cem­ber 8, 2022, to Jan­u­ary 20, 2025.