Shas­tri Boodan

GML Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC), Bal­dath Ma­haraj, has de­scribed the in­tro­duc­tion of a new 10 per cent tar­iff on the coun­try's ex­ports to the Unit­ed States as a piv­otal mo­ment to strength­en ex­port readi­ness and deep­en com­mer­cial ties with the coun­try.

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s lat­est set of tar­iffs drew ob­jec­tions yes­ter­day from Amer­i­ca’s trad­ing part­ners in­clud­ing Chi­na and Japan, with Aus­tralia’s trade min­is­ter slam­ming them as “com­plete­ly un­jus­ti­fied.”
The US an­nounced tar­iffs of 10 per cent to 12.5 per cent on 60 coun­tries late Thurs­day, say­ing they had failed to ad­e­quate­ly en­force a ban on goods made with forced labour.
The new tar­iffs took ef­fect just as stop­gap levies Trump im­posed af­ter a sting­ing de­feat at the Supreme Court ex­pired at 12:01 a.m. yes­ter­day.
In a state­ment, Ma­haraj said the Unit­ed States re­mains Trinidad and To­ba­go's longest-stand­ing and most im­por­tant trad­ing part­ner, with the re­la­tion­ship built on shared eco­nom­ic in­ter­ests and mu­tu­al re­spect.
He said the lo­cal busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty op­er­ates un­der strong eth­i­cal labour stan­dards and trans­par­ent sup­ply chains, plac­ing the fo­cus on work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly to en­sure that lo­cal pro­duc­ers con­tin­ue to en­joy seam­less and trust­ed ac­cess to North Amer­i­can mar­kets.
The Cham­ber pres­i­dent said adapt­ing to the new tar­iff struc­ture is es­sen­tial to sup­port­ing the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism's strat­e­gy of gen­er­at­ing an ad­di­tion­al US$2 bil­lion in non-en­er­gy ex­ports by 2027.
He not­ed that achiev­ing this tar­get de­pends on main­tain­ing ef­fi­cient trade chan­nels while ex­pand­ing the coun­try's in­dus­tri­al base.
The Cham­ber pres­i­dent added that clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion among ex­port pro­mo­tion agen­cies, in­ter­na­tion­al trade au­thor­i­ties and lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers would help demon­strate the in­tegri­ty of T&T's prod­ucts, im­prove com­pli­ance with in­ter­na­tion­al re­quire­ments and keep the coun­try's non-en­er­gy ex­ports com­pet­i­tive in glob­al mar­kets.
CNN yes­ter­day re­port­ed Aus­tralian Trade Min­is­ter Don Far­rell as re­ject­ing claims link­ing Aus­tralia to slave labour.

“We be­lieve that amongst all of the coun­tries in the world Aus­tralia does take the is­sue of slav­ery, mod­ern slav­ery, se­ri­ous­ly, and will con­tin­ue to do that,” Far­rell told re­porters in Ade­laide.
New Zealand Prime Min­is­ter Christo­pher Lux­on said the tar­iffs on his coun­try, al­so sub­ject to a 12.5 per cent im­port du­ty, were “ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ing,” un­jus­ti­fied and harm­ful to trade.
A US in­ves­ti­ga­tion serv­ing as the ba­sis for the tar­iffs did not pro­vide mean­ing­ful ev­i­dence to sup­port al­le­ga­tions of forced labour.