GEISHA ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

As the longest-ever gov­ern­ment shut­down in Unit­ed States his­to­ry con­tin­ues, there are warn­ings that T&T and oth­er coun­tries in the Caribbean could be af­fect­ed.

Econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon said the shut­down can cre­ate greater eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty in the re­gion and he is urg­ing this coun­try’s for­eign af­fairs of­fi­cials to pay clos­er at­ten­tion to is­sues which might di­rect­ly af­fect trade and im­mi­gra­tion.

“While the world, the Caribbean in­clud­ed, is more and more turn­ing to de­vel­oped economies for trade, de­pen­dence on North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope is still crit­i­cal for this re­gion. As such, if the sit­u­a­tion in the US wors­ens there will be im­pli­ca­tions for the Caribbean,” he said.

Ramkissoon said while in the short term there might not be any sig­nif­i­cant im­pact, over the long term, for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI) and oth­er ar­eas of the Caribbean and T&T’s econ­o­my can be af­fect­ed.

“The de­vel­oped world is still strug­gling to achieve strong and sus­tain­able growth and fail­ure in fis­cal man­age­ment in the US can on­ly make the sit­u­a­tion worse for that coun­try and all its trad­ing part­ners,” he said.

CEO of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Gabriel Faria said as the shut­down con­tin­ues it’s in­evitable that it’s go­ing to have an im­pact on those con­duct­ing busi­ness with the var­i­ous fed­er­al au­thor­i­ties in the US.

“Es­pe­cial­ly many of the small­er coun­tries like us where we need to get ap­provals for visas and for agri­cul­tur­al im­ports. We hope they will come to some sort of arrange­ment soon be­cause this could af­fect our busi­ness arrange­ments.

“I know many peo­ple are ac­tu­al­ly re­ar­rang­ing their trav­el in the US,” Faria said.

He said Cham­ber have mem­bers have ex­pressed con­cern about the ef­fect the shut­down is hav­ing on their busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing ap­point­ments with fed­er­al au­thor­i­ties.

Po­lit­i­cal stakes are high in the US as the shut­down moves in­to a fifth week, with hun­dreds of thou­sands of fed­er­al work­ers go­ing with­out pay and no out­ward signs of res­o­lu­tion.

The shut­down be­gan on De­cem­ber 22 when the Unit­ed States Con­gress and Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump could not agree on an ap­pro­pri­a­tions bill to fund the op­er­a­tions of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for the 2019 fis­cal year or a tem­po­rary con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion that would ex­tend the dead­line for pass­ing a bill.

It stemmed from an im­passe over Trump’s de­mand for US$5.7 bil­lion in fed­er­al funds for a US–Mex­i­co bor­der wall.