Argentine economist Dr Daniel Perrotti believes that given T&T’s large energy resources it can lead the region in deepening trade among member states and also lead the way into new markets in Latin America.
In an interview with the Business Guardian, Perrotti gave this view and also shared two papers he wrote on the region’s trade with the United States.
According to his personal website, www.danielperrotti.com, he is an associate professor (currently on leave) at the University of Buenos Aires and has served at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Chile.
Perrotti wrote a paper, published in 2025, entitled “Recent Trends in the United States and Caribbean Trade Relations” which was published by University of Malta’s Islands and Small States Institute.
Former governor of the Central Bank of T&T and finance minister Winston Dookeran and Costa Rican economist Andres Valenciano also contributed to the paper.
They also published another related paper in 2025 entitled “United States-Caribbean Trade Relations: Geopolitical Challenges, Economic Dynamics and Policy Pathways.”
Responding to questions from the Business Guardian, Perrotti indicated that the papers make the case that intra-regional trade is severely underdeveloped and that this is a wasted opportunity to generate economies of scale.
“Within that framework, T&T stands out as uniquely positioned to lead,” he said.
He gave the view that three roles follow naturally from his analysis:
* T&T can act as an anchor for regional value chains.
He said T&T’s energy and petrochemical capacity can supply the inputs around which Caribbean processing and manufacturing networks are built, so that more value is captured within the region before goods reach the United States.
* There is a role for T&T as an investor.
He said the region’s shortage is not only of markets but of capital, and the inter-island transport links and processing infrastructure all need financing and that T&T is better placed than most to provide.
* T&T can play the role of an institutional driver.
He said the measures they found to carry the highest immediate returns are the least glamorous ones — customs modernisation, harmonised standards, quality certification — which the evidence they reviewed suggests can cut trade costs by 13 to 15 per cent, and T&T has the administrative capacity to champion them within Caricom
He argued that T&T taking a leading role is not altruism.
“A deeper regional market gives T&T’s own non-energy exporters the scale they currently lack, which serves its own diversification agenda. In the logic of the papers, leadership here is enlightened self-interest.”
In July, the Business Guardian reported that T&T’s Government has begun talks to become an associate member of the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) whose members include Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay among other Latin American countries.
Perrotti also expressed the view that looking toward nearby Latin American markets is entirely consistent with the central argument of his work.
“The diagnosis in the papers is that the Caribbean’s vulnerability lies in trading little and with very few partners, and the way out we propose is what we call strategic multi-alignment: deepening ties with the United States, which remains the region’s natural partner by geography and history, while widening the room for maneuver with other actors. Latin America is the most natural direction in which to widen it, and there is already a Caribbean precedent: Guyana and Suriname are associated states of MERCOSUR,” he said.
At the same time, he said he would refrain from commenting on any specific ongoing trade negotiations, which is beyond the scope of their research. However the framework of the papers does speak to what makes such openings succeed.
He further stated that a bloc of roughly 300 million people offers competitive manufacturers a market of real scale, as well as a potential source of investment and technology.
“But two conditions from our analysis apply here as everywhere: market access on paper only becomes market access in practice through the unglamorous work of logistics, standards and trade facilitation; and diversification toward new partners should complement, not substitute, the deepening of Caricom itself, because the region negotiates best — with any partner — from a coordinated position. As we put it in the papers: autonomy is not solitude; it is having somewhere to choose from.”
Perrotti also referred to the papers, which examine recent trends in United States-Caribbean trade relations (2021–2024), highlighting persistent structural asymmetries and limited diversification.
He stated that goods exchanges remain concentrated in energy, transportation, and food, while services are dominated by tourism, leaving the region vulnerable to external shocks. Also, the study confirms high dependence on a narrow range of products and partners.
Based on their research in the two papers, trade between the United States and the Caribbean consistently represents less than 1.0 per cent of total US trade: it ranged between 0.71 per cent in 2021 and 0.84 per cent in 2023.
In the papers, they conclude that for the United States, the region is a marginal partner. But from the Caribbean side, the relationship is existential, and that is where the real problem appears: it is not only that the Caribbean trades little, but that it trades little and with very few countries.
T&T and The Bahamas together account for nearly half of all trade; adding Guyana, three countries represent two-thirds of this trade.
On the goods side, the basket rests on energy, transport, and food; on the services side, everything gravitates around tourism. The services deficit with the United States, driven above all by travel, deepened from US$5 billion in 2021 to nearly US$9.8 billion in 2023.
Perrotti referred to a commentary on his website where he in July he argued that that concentration means vulnerability. “An economy that depends on a handful of products and a handful of buyers has no shock absorbers: every external blow (a pandemic, a sudden tariff, a recession in the destination market) lands squarely, with nothing to spread the impact. The question, then, is not how to trade more of the same, but how to trade differently.”
He maintains that T&T and the Caribbean can deepen its ties with the United States (its natural partner by geography and history) while, at the same time, widening its room for maneuver with other actors and strengthening its own institutions.
“Autonomy is not solitude. It is having somewhere to choose from,” he said.
