PM set to meet Trump

Da­reece Po­lo in St Kitts

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been in­vit­ed by Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to at­tend what has been dubbed the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as sum­mit in Do­ral, Flori­da, sig­nalling deep­en­ing en­gage­ment be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Wash­ing­ton.

News of the in­vi­ta­tion emerged af­ter her pri­vate meet­ing with US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio on the side­lines of the 50th Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in Bas­seterre, St Kitts, yes­ter­day.

Fol­low­ing the ear­ly-morn­ing ple­nary ses­sion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar left for bi­lat­er­al talks with Ru­bio. When Guardian Me­dia spoke to her short­ly af­ter­wards, she said she had lim­it­ed de­tails as the in­vi­ta­tion had just come to her at­ten­tion, but ex­pressed op­ti­mism about what lies ahead.

“All for the ben­e­fit for the peo­ple of T&T. What­ev­er we do is for the ben­e­fit—se­cu­ri­ty, trade, pros­per­i­ty and of course safe­ty,” she said.

Guyana’s Pres­i­dent, Ir­faan Ali, of­fered fur­ther con­text, in­di­cat­ing the fo­cus will be on re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion.

“This is a meet­ing deal­ing with se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters, it’s deal­ing with some of the chal­lenges in the re­gion, and to see how we can co­or­di­nate bet­ter in re­la­tion to those chal­lenges, and this is an en­gage­ment that has been on­go­ing.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had ear­li­er in­di­cat­ed that T&T and Guyana were the on­ly two coun­tries con­firmed to at­tend. How­ev­er, Ali stopped short of com­ment­ing on the broad­er guest list.

“I’m not aware who’s present or who will not be present. I can speak about Guyana. And Guyana has been in­vit­ed to this meet­ing, and we will be at­tend­ing.”

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she in­tends to ex­pand on is­sues raised dur­ing the closed-door Cari­com dis­cus­sions when she meets Trump next week on March 7.

Since Feb­ru­ary 12, in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia have re­port­ed that Trump planned to con­vene Latin Amer­i­can lead­ers from Ar­genti­na, Paraguay, Bo­livia, El Sal­vador, Ecuador and Hon­duras at a sum­mit aimed at coun­ter­ing Chi­na’s grow­ing foot­print in the re­gion, where Bei­jing has be­come a ma­jor trad­ing part­ner.

Un­der Trump, Wash­ing­ton has sought to re­assert its in­flu­ence across the Amer­i­c­as. Speak­ing at the 2026 Mu­nich Se­cu­ri­ty Con­fer­ence, Ru­bio ar­gued that the time had come for a re­vival of West­ern dom­i­nance.

The up­com­ing meet­ing caps a se­ries of high-lev­el en­gage­ments be­tween Per­sad-Bisses­sar and US of­fi­cials since her April 28 elec­tion vic­to­ry.

She held her first of­fi­cial call with Ru­bio on May 2, one day af­ter be­ing sworn in­to of­fice.

On Sep­tem­ber 8, she spoke with US Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau, who praised her for her pub­lic sup­port of US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean.

On Sep­tem­ber 30, on the side­lines of the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in New York, she met him in per­son for the first time in Wash­ing­ton, where se­cu­ri­ty, en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion and re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty were dis­cussed.

Fol­low­ing those talks, Trinidad and To­ba­go se­cured an Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cence from the US Trea­sury De­part­ment, al­low­ing it to pur­sue spe­cif­ic en­er­gy-re­lat­ed trans­ac­tions de­spite sanc­tions re­stric­tions linked to Venezuela.

On No­vem­ber 25, Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so met with the Chair­man of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen­er­al Dan Caine, in a se­cu­ri­ty-fo­cused en­gage­ment that un­der­scored grow­ing mil­i­tary-to-mil­i­tary co­op­er­a­tion.