An­dre Wor­rell

A plan by Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump for an en­er­gy-in­de­pen­dent Amer­i­can could wors­en the eco­nom­ic slump in T&T. Those were among the fore­casts made by First Cit­i­zens In­vest­ment Ser­vices (FCIS) in a re­port en­ti­tled Af­ter Trump's Vic­to­ry, the World is Left to Won­der.

The in­vest­ment and an­a­lyt­ics firm said while it is too ear­ly to pre­dict with any cer­tain­ty the im­pact of a Trump pres­i­den­cy on the world econ­o­my, the ex­pect­ed new era of "Trumpa­nomics" brings with it an un­prece­dent­ed de­gree of un­cer­tain­ty for glob­al mar­kets.

With re­spect to the Caribbean, the re­port high­light­ed the like­ly ef­fects of an an­ti-im­mi­grant stance on re­mit­tance flows and what an en­er­gy-in­de­pen­dent Amer­i­ca could mean for T&T.

It said: "A Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion's pur­suit of tougher im­mi­gra­tion laws that would re­strict ac­cess to new mi­grant work­ers and neg­a­tive­ly af­fect re­mit­tances in­to the Caribbean will weigh on pri­vate con­sump­tion and place down­side pres­sure on some ter­ri­to­ries' ex­ter­nal ac­counts.

"Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Pres­i­dent-elect is ex­pect­ed to pur­sue an en­er­gy pol­i­cy which in­cludes un­lock­ing vast amounts of shale en­er­gy re­serves which he es­ti­mates at US$50 tril­lion, which if done could fur­ther ex­as­per­ate the eco­nom­ic slump in Trinidad and To­ba­go."

The re­port, which ex­am­ines sev­er­al as­pects of Trump's cam­paign rhetoric and dis­cuss­es how his pres­i­den­cy could af­fect dif­fer­ent trad­ing part­ners and ter­ri­to­ries across the globe, high­lights the po­ten­tial im­pact of re­stric­tive im­mi­gra­tion poli­cies, trade cur­tail­ment and en­er­gy in­de­pen­dence on Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean

"Don­ald Trump's promise to put Amer­i­ca first helped pro­pel him to the US pres­i­den­cy, but it al­so has un­leashed un­cer­tain­ty on the glob­al econ­o­my; sin­gling out trad­ing part­ners and of­fer­ing few specifics that might calm al­lies, busi­ness­es and in­vestors."

The re­port al­so stat­ed: "With a very strong re­form man­date, it is un­clear to what ex­tent some of Trump's more con­tro­ver­sial pol­i­cy po­si­tions re­lat­ing to se­cur­ing the US bor­der with Mex­i­co (The Mex­i­can Wall), de­port­ing un­doc­u­ment­ed im­mi­grants and aban­don­ing the North Amer­i­can Free Trade Agree­ment (NAF­TA) will be im­ple­ment­ed. We re­main scep­ti­cal that Trump's cam­paign rhetoric will di­rect­ly trans­late in­to pol­i­cy, as even a Re­pub­li­can Con­gress is like­ly to put con­sid­er­able checks and bal­ances on Trump's pol­i­cy pro­pos­als."

Com­ment­ing on the stance Trump could take with Asian ter­ri­to­ries, the re­port sug­gest­ed that Chi­na could be a fo­cal point of his ad­min­is­tra­tion.

"On the cam­paign trail Trump hint­ed at a more ro­bust pol­i­cy to­wards Chi­na, ac­cus­ing Bei­jing of 'rap­ing' the US econ­o­my and threat­en­ing to slap mas­sive tar­iffs on Chi­nese im­ports while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly threat­en­ing to pull US troops out of Bei­jing's re­gion­al ri­vals Japan and South Ko­rea."

The re­port notes, how­ev­er, that Trump's po­si­tion to­ward In­dia has been more con­ge­nial and said a Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion could deep­en eco­nom­ic ties with the world's largest democ­ra­cy.

"Trump is like­ly to seek fur­ther open­ing on In­dia's part, as all US ad­min­is­tra­tions have. A Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion will like­ly con­tin­ue to per­ceive In­dia's patent law as in­suf­fi­cient­ly pro­tec­tive of in­no­va­tion, es­pe­cial­ly over phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal patents, will like­ly con­tin­ue. In­dia can breathe a sigh of re­lief, how­ev­er, about the Trans-Pa­cif­ic Part­ner­ship, which many in In­dia saw as an 'an­ti-In­dia' ex­clu­sion­ary trade agree­ment."