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Monday, July 21, 2025

Uncertainty for T&T with Trump

by

20161109

By 3.35 am yes­ter­day, the cliffhang­er sce­nar­ios were over: Hillary Clin­ton and the De­moc­rats were out and Don­ald Trump as a Re­pub­li­can US pres­i­dent-elect was call­ing for uni­ty.

Clin­ton nev­er came out to the Jav­its Con­ven­tion Cen­tre to ad­dress her wait­ing sup­port­ers, who had watched in ap­pre­hen­sion, sad­ness, and dis­ap­point­ment as the gap be­tween her num­bers and Trump's widened. Cam­paign chief John Podes­ta ap­peared at 3 am and told them to go home and rest, as there "were more seats" to count. Half an hour lat­er, US me­dia re­port­ed Clin­ton had called Trump to con­cede and con­grat­u­late him.

And that call was the sec­ond thing Trump an­nounced when he took the stage at the New York (Mid­town Man­hat­tan) Hilton to de­clare vic­to­ry. In the speech, Trump, gra­cious to­wards Clin­ton, reached out to vot­ers, say­ing it was time to bind the wounds (of cam­paign­ing), echoed his uni­ty call and pledged to be a pres­i­dent for all Amer­i­cans and that his gov­ern­ment would serve the peo­ple.

"The for­got­ten peo­ple will be for­got­ten no more..." he said to ring­ing cheers.Touch­ing briefly on some cam­paign plans, he told the world com­mu­ni­ty while he would put Amer­i­cans first, "I'll deal fair­ly with every­one,"

Will he stay true? Here's how some T&T ex­perts feel Trump's cam­paign state­ments on se­cu­ri­ty, im­mi­gra­tion poli­cies, Mus­lims and oth­er mat­ters may af­fect T&T.

For­mer diplo­mat/Pub­lic Ser­vice head Regi­nald Du­mas

"Plat­form state­ments car­ry a cer­tain ring but when you en­ter of­fice, re­al­i­ty might be a dif­fer­ent thing. If pres­i­dent-elect Trump has to back away from his plat­form po­si­tions, we'll have to see what im­pact it will have on his sup­port­ers, who vot­ed for him on his promis­es. For T&T, if I were the Gov­ern­ment I'd cer­tain­ly make ear­ly con­tact with the Trump team–and start lat­er this week or lat­est by next week–to seek in­for­mal dis­cus­sions on where T&T and the Caribbean will go. Hav­ing worked in Wash­ing­ton, I know one of the most im­por­tant things is ac­cess, at least to the pow­er bro­kers. It's ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary. So T&T should en­deav­our this with Cari­com col­leagues or alone and po­si­tion our­selves to have ac­cess and bet­ter un­der­stand where this new di­rec­tion will take us."

Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty at­tor­ney­Nafeesa Mo­hammed:

"The Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty is in dis­be­lief. This vic­to­ry could see a deep­en­ing of very strong an­ti-Mus­lim sen­ti­ment. Here in T&T we're al­ready see­ing Is­lam­o­pho­bia. Face­book com­ments lo­cal­ly and from some over­seas have shown a tremen­dous out­pour­ing of dis­ap­point­ment at this (vic­to­ry) and shock. What I'm pick­ing up in the com­mu­ni­ty is the un­der­stand­ing of the Qu'ran's teach­ings about the end of times.

"Our au­thor­i­ties should recog­nise the com­mu­ni­ty is a sig­nif­i­cant part of the pop­u­la­tion that's helped build T&T and what­ev­er dic­tates of this new US pres­i­dent, our au­thor­i­ties must en­sure sys­tems are im­ple­ment­ed to pro­tect in­no­cent cit­i­zens. All in­for­ma­tion about the com­mu­ni­ty must be ver­i­fied. Giv­en Trump's state­ments, he may have no choice–if he's to move for­ward–to bring about uni­ty, as there are sig­nif­i­cant mi­grant and mi­nor­i­ty pop­u­la­tions in the US. In the post-elec­tion 'hon­ey­moon' pe­ri­od, there's not much to do but give him the ben­e­fit of the doubt to prove him­self and see if he means uni­ty. We just have to pray there are sys­tems to con­tain any ef­fort at bul­ly­ing, alien­at­ing, vic­tim­is­ing or dis­crim­i­na­tion against mi­nori­ties."

AS­JA pres­i­dent Ya­coob Ali:

"Some of his cam­paign state­ments (about Mus­lims) were un­for­tu­nate. The US is a coun­try of im­mi­grants, built by im­mi­grants. I'm sure his fam­i­ly came to the US from some­where al­so. I don't think he'd want to jeop­ar­dise the free flow of peo­ple in­to the US, as there's al­ways a labour short­age. So I don't think his state­ments will be some­thing he can act on alone and he may not get the sup­port from their Con­gress to ful­fil all that he's said. He may soon un­der­stand that. So I'm not wor­ried."

Ja­maat al-Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr:

"I pre­dict­ed Trump would win, but I don't think it'll im­pact neg­a­tive­ly on T&T. When you're try­ing to be leader, you say all kinds of things and when you get in­to of­fice it's an­oth­er thing. He speaks his mind so you know where you stand with him. He said he want­ed to be pres­i­dent of the US, not pres­i­dent of the world and he doesn't de­pend on fi­nanciers who might ma­nip­u­late him. Hillary Clin­ton was ju­bi­lant when (Muam­mar Gadaf­fi) was killed and Barack Oba­ma did noth­ing for the Afro-Amer­i­cans.

"I feel he was po­lit­i­cal­ly cor­rect in want­i­ng to pre­vent some Mus­lims com­ing from the Arab world. The US has been so cru­el to the Mus­lim world, the lat­ter has a bit­ter taste in its mouth re­gard­ing the US. So you can't open US doors with­out prop­er­ly vet­ting peo­ple, so his pro­pos­al was cor­rect. On im­mi­gra­tion, a lot of T&T peo­ple go to the US and do wrong things so if he thinks peo­ple who com­mit crimes should be de­port­ed, I agree."

UNC MP Dr Bhoe Tewarie:

"We've en­tered a dif­fer­ent world with this vic­to­ry, giv­en Trump's dis­po­si­tion to Na­to al­liances, which may have im­pli­ca­tions for the re­con­fig­u­ra­tion of mil­i­tary al­liances and safe­ty/se­cu­ri­ty is­sues glob­al­ly and al­so his 'US first' po­si­tion on trade and im­mi­gra­tion, which will have an ef­fect on all states in­clud­ing T&T and the Caribbean. We have to see what's hap­pen­ing with the mar­kets. Apart from the trade par­a­digm, which is about to change, we're like­ly to see un­cer­tain­ty con­tin­u­ing in fi­nance and fi­nan­cial arrange­ments glob­al­ly and con­tin­u­ing un­cer­tain­ty in the en­er­gy sec­tor–all bad for T&T. We may al­so ex­pe­ri­ence more US de­por­tees, which would re­quire us to ne­go­ti­ate with the US. Many un­doc­u­ment­ed T&T na­tion­als in the US might have prob­lems and have to re­turn, adding to T&T un­em­ploy­ment."


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