It has been a chal­leng­ing year. Many things that we have tak­en for grant­ed are be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly com­pli­cat­ed. As is cus­tom­ary, free and fair elec­tions were held in April, and the trans­fer of pow­er was peace­ful. The ad­min­is­tra­tion has start­ed to de­liv­er on its promis­es. The Op­po­si­tion has ad­just­ed to new lead­er­ship and is set­tling in­to its role.

The 2026 Bud­get speech de­liv­ered some of its elec­tion promis­es, giv­en the re­al­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal in­her­i­tance. The Home In­va­sion (Self-De­fence and De­fence of Prop­er­ty) was passed and en­act­ed. In­fla­tion re­mains low.

How­ev­er, vi­o­lent crime, kid­nap­ping and home in­va­sions re­main a re­al­i­ty. Moody’s change in out­look from sta­ble to neg­a­tive demon­strates that we are in rough wa­ters. Com­plaints of for­eign ex­change short­ages re­main an in­tractable is­sue that has not been ad­dressed. As we move in­to an­oth­er year, for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty will re­main a hot-but­ton top­ic that de­mands di­rect, mar­ket-ori­ent­ed ac­tion. Dur­ing what should be a buoy­ant mar­ket, Christ­mas shop­pers are show­ing re­straint, if not cau­tion.

In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, the geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly com­plex, fraught with the dan­ger of mis­cal­cu­la­tion, not on­ly in Ukraine but al­so here in the Caribbean. This week, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in­ten­si­fied the pres­sure on Venezuela by an­nounc­ing a block­ade of all sanc­tioned oil tankers en­ter­ing and leav­ing Venezuela, less than a week af­ter US forces seized a sanc­tioned tanker off the coun­try’s coast.

In a so­cial me­dia post, Pres­i­dent Trump in­di­cat­ed that these ac­tions were part of his ef­fort to re­cov­er land and oil rights stolen by Venezuela, thus re­mov­ing the pre­text of a counter-nar­cotics traf­fick­ing op­er­a­tion.

Yes­ter­day, the US Coast Guard seized a sec­ond tanker in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters off Venezuela’s coast. It was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear whether the ves­sel seized yes­ter­day was un­der sanc­tions.

Oil is Venezuela’s lifeblood and was al­ready un­der strain due to ad­di­tion­al sanc­tions im­posed by the US last month. Much of the coun­try’s oil is sold to Chi­na. US law may give the US the right to seize sanc­tioned oil tankers. In­ter­na­tion­al law set out un­der the UN Con­ven­tion on the Law of the Sea (UN­C­LOS) gives states the “right of vis­it”, al­low­ing their of­fi­cials to stop and in­spect the ship on the high seas–es­sen­tial­ly mean­ing in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters if they are fly­ing a false flag. This does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly cre­ate a gen­er­al li­cence to en­force any uni­lat­er­al reg­u­la­to­ry regime. Venezuela has called this an act of pira­cy.

Venezuela’s Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez re­spond­ed to the seizure of the first tanker. She de­clared Trinidad and To­ba­go com­plic­it in the seizure and an­nounced that all en­er­gy ties and gas con­tracts with T&T were sev­ered. Whilst T&T does not cur­rent­ly de­pend on Venezuela for the sup­ply of oil or gas, the two coun­tries share the Lo­ran Man­a­tee gas field, which re­quires Venezuela’s agree­ment to mon­e­tise those re­serves. In­deed. Man­a­tee is meant to start pro­duc­tion in 2027 and is con­sid­ered cen­tral to gen­er­at­ing ad­di­tion­al rev­enue and for­eign ex­change at that time. This “sev­er­ance” com­pli­cates T&T’s hori­zon for in­creas­ing nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion.

In ad­di­tion to the eco­nom­ic im­pact of Venezuela’s re­sponse, there are na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­sid­er­a­tions. On Thurs­day at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, the Prime Min­is­ter said that the US is the on­ly coun­try ca­pa­ble of de­fend­ing T&T. Should any­thing un­to­ward de­vel­op, we cer­tain­ly hope it will.