Rose­marie Sant

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar has writ­ten to US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump ask­ing him whether his gov­ern­ment in­tends to nul­li­fy the For­eign Ac­counts Tax Com­pli­ance Act (FAT­CA).

In a two page let­ter dat­ed Jan­u­ary 13, Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­grat­u­lat­ed Trump on his elec­tion and said her pur­pose in writ­ing him was the law en­act­ed by his pre­de­cess­ror Barack Oba­ma which had be­come the "sub­ject of sharp con­tro­ver­sy here in Trinidad and To­ba­go."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she wrote the let­ter be­cause she had urged Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to raise the mat­ter with the new US Pres­i­dent and was re­buffed by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert, who claimed Trump"did not have time for this."

Not­ing that a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment had start­ed to ex­am­ine the FAT­CA Bill, she told Trump: "It would be help­ful for us to know if the rel­e­vant US law may soon be nul­li­fied, ei­ther by leg­isla­tive or ex­ec­u­tive ac­tion, or both."

She re­mind­ed Trump that among his cam­paign promis­es was re­vo­ca­tion of ex­ec­u­tive ac­tions tak­en by his pre­de­ces­sor which ex­ceed­ed his au­thor­i­ty as Pres­i­dent.

"This would ap­pear to cov­er non-treaty In­ter-Gov­ern­men­tal Agree­ments with Trinidad and To­ba­go and many oth­er coun­tries to im­ple­ment FAT­CA un­der terms not cod­i­fied in US statute or treaty terms," she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed that Re­pub­li­can bills to re­peal FAT­CA were in­tro­duced in the for­mer US Con­gress by Sen­a­tor Rand Paul and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mark Mead­ows, but went nowhere be­cause of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic con­trolled Con­gress.

She said she had been "in­formed that a FAT­CA re­peal bill might be among the re­forms in­clud­ed in Trump's com­pre­hen­sive leg­isla­tive pack­age.

"What­ev­er in­for­ma­tion you may pro­vide about how your ad­min­is­tra­tion in­tends to pro­ceed would be much ap­pre­ci­at­ed so that the Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go may have a bet­ter sense how we might pro­ceed," she said.

Per­sad Bisses­sar told Pres­i­dent Trump she is await­ing his ear­li­est re­ply.