Raphael John-Lall

For­mer Plan­ning Min­is­ter dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, Dr Bhoe Tewarie, is hop­ing T&T can man­age its re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela, giv­en the po­ten­tial for trade and busi­ness ties in the fu­ture.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Tewarie re­mind­ed the coun­try that in 2022, he along with econ­o­mists Dr Roger Ho­sein and Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les au­thored a book on Venezuela, “Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Im­pli­ca­tions of the Venezue­lan Mi­grant Cri­sis: Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty.”

Last week, ten­sions boiled over with Venezuela when Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar threat­ened to use “lethal force” af­ter Venezue­lan of­fi­cials al­leged that at least one T&T na­tion­al was cap­tured tyring to desta­bilise Venezuela along with oth­er Colom­bian para­mil­i­taries.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar then vowed to align her po­si­tion on Venezuela with that of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, who has par­tial­ly banned Venezue­lan cit­i­zens from trav­el­ling to the Unit­ed States and has tight­ened eco­nom­ic sanc­tions.

This de­ba­cle comes af­ter an­oth­er low point in re­la­tions when in April, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced that the Unit­ed States had re­voked the two li­cens­es they grant­ed in the past for the de­vel­op­ment of off­shore nat­ur­al gas projects be­tween T&T, and Venezuela.

On Fri­day, in a Face­book post, Young warned Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Gov­ern­ment of “fi­nan­cial dis­as­ter” and the dan­gers of de­stroy­ing po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic re­la­tions with Venezuela.

In a more pos­i­tive step, on Mon­day, T&T’s Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs and Cari­com Af­fairs, Sean Sobers met Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador to T&T Ál­varo Sánchez Cordero where they had “con­struc­tive di­a­logue.” How­ev­er, even that was side­lined when lat­er in the evening, Venezue­lan Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo called T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments “crazy.”

De­spite ide­o­log­i­cal and po­lit­i­cal dif­fer­ences be­tween the two neigh­bours, Tewarie cau­tioned T&T in the way Venezuela is han­dled and point­ed to pos­si­ble eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion in the fu­ture.

“The po­ten­tial for trade, in­vest­ment and tourism is sig­nif­i­cant. Our cur­rent Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, Dr Mooni­lal, was, this week, urg­ing Shell on, with Man­a­tee from which gas is due in 2027. If the Venezue­lan Op­po­si­tion gets in­to gov­ern­ment, they will want Drag­on to suc­ceed, and the US po­si­tion will al­so be more favourable to­wards col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Venezuela and T&T. The prob­lem is not Venezuela, the peo­ple of Venezuela or its re­sources. The prob­lem is Nico­las Maduro. Eight mil­lion peo­ple have fled the Maduro regime.”

Tewarie al­so not­ed that Venezuela has one of the world’s largest re­sources bases and T&T must keep all op­tions avail­able in terms of fu­ture part­ner­ships.

“We must not for­get that Venezuela owns 17 per cent of the world’s pe­tro­le­um re­sources. The US wants their oil as well as Guyana. Chi­na im­ports oil from Venezuela, as does In­dia. Rus­sia owns nat­ur­al gas fields in Venezuela. Iran pro­vides tech­ni­cal sup­port for en­er­gy in­dus­tries there. Al­so, Iran has signed a 20-year co­op­er­a­tion agree­ment with Venezuela. And T&T, has agree­ments for Venezue­lan gas. That nat­ur­al gas is valu­able to T&T, as it is to Venezuela. And we need the US on our side. They are the gi­ant in this hemi­sphere and a strong al­ly, and we must be ever mind­ful of the evolv­ing geopol­i­tics in this hemi­sphere and glob­al­ly.”

At the same time, he said the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties were “way out of line” in mak­ing base­less al­le­ga­tions against T&T.

“Pres­i­dent Maduro of Venezuela, was en­tire­ly out of line to at­tack T&T pub­licly with un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed al­le­ga­tions and a threat to pur­sue crim­i­nals wher­ev­er they might be. If he had a prob­lem with T&T, he should have raised it through diplo­mat­ic chan­nels. Some­thing is not right about the man­ner in which Pres­i­dent Maduro’s con­cerns en­tered the pub­lic sphere, es­pe­cial­ly since gangs, guns and drugs are well known to au­thor­i­ties in Venezuela. By the same to­ken, our Prime Min­is­ter, once aware of Maduro’s pub­lic ut­ter­ances, should have had her Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs call in the Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador here for an ex­pla­na­tion. Both coun­tries missed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gage con­struc­tive­ly.”

Tewarie ar­gued that it may be that as a strong­man, Maduro was test­ing T&T’s “la­dy Prime Min­is­ter.”

“In the cir­cum­stances she, al­so, may have felt the need to be strong, bold and point­ed­ly as­sertive about T&T’s sov­er­eign rights. How­ev­er, it is de­sir­able that things be put back on track now. With a rag­ing pub­lic dis­pute, it is easy for things to get out of hand. When the ge­nie gets out of the bot­tle, it is hard to put it back in.”

He al­so raised the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Pres­i­dent Maduro can be­come more ad­ven­tur­ist and reck­less.

“Al­ready there is the Es­se­qui­bo basin con­flict with Guyana and, in spite of Cari­com’s me­di­at­ing ef­forts, Maduro has shown per­sis­tent­ly ac­tive ag­gres­sion. Guyana has been force­ful­ly re­sis­tant. Brazil has tak­en a strong stand on elec­tion fraud, and has blocked Venezuela’s ap­pli­ca­tion for full mem­ber­ship in BRICS. Co­lum­bia, while tak­ing in a mil­lion Venezue­lan im­mi­grants, has tak­en a strong stand against Maduro and against elec­tion fraud. Our Prime Min­is­ter seems to be in align­ment with this group of coun­tries, all neigh­bours to Venezuela.”

While he ad­vised T&T to con­tin­ue to de­vel­op bi­lat­er­al eco­nom­ic ties with Chi­na and oth­er BRICS mem­bers, he said it must be done on T&T’s terms rather be­ing aligned with Maduro’s regime.

“We should al­so dis­tance our­selves from the Maduro link­age with Chi­na, Iran, Rus­sia and Turkey, and seek our own best in­ter­est with these coun­tries, on our own terms, de­tached from Maduro. In the case of Chi­na, we should work con­struc­tive­ly with the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca on mat­ters of trade, in­vest­ment and de­vel­op­ment, at a time when tar­iffs are be­ing im­posed every­where by the US Gov­ern­ment.”

Gon­za­les, who co-au­thored the book with Tewarie on Venezue­lan mi­gra­tion and its eco­nom­ic im­pli­ca­tions, told the Busi­ness Guardian that eco­nom­ic and oth­er re­la­tions with Venezuela have de­te­ri­o­rat­ed since for­mer pres­i­dent Hugo Chávez took pow­er in 1998.

“Since Chávez came to pow­er, T&T’s eco­nom­ic re­la­tions with Venezuela have de­te­ri­o­rat­ed be­cause of poli­cies adopt­ed by Venezuela to re­strict trade and af­fect in­vest­ment. Maduro has not done much to re­verse these poli­cies, and with the po­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing his pres­i­den­cy along with US sanc­tions, the cli­mate for im­prov­ing busi­ness re­la­tions has not im­proved.”

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les did say Maduro has made at­tempts to im­prove the busi­ness and trade cli­mate.

“That be­ing said how­ev­er, it should be not­ed that more head­way was made with Maduro in ex­ploit­ing cross-bor­der gas and I would think that if diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions con­tin­ue there would still be op­por­tu­ni­ties to do some busi­ness with Venezuela bear­ing in mind that the mar­ket con­di­tions need to be en­hanced there and the pri­vate sec­tor more re­spect­ed in what is seen as a so­cial­ist econ­o­my. The cur­rent ex­change be­tween the two gov­ern­ments would al­so af­fect the flow of vis­i­tors who would want to wait and see how they are be­ing treat­ed at the bor­der.”

Re­la­tion­ship his­to­ry

The re­la­tion­ship be­tween Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Maduro was not al­ways in a state of cri­sis. In fact, ex­act­ly 10 years ago, the two lead­ers met in Port-of-Spain, signed agree­ments, shook hands and promised stronger eco­nom­ic and diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions.

Both lead­ers first met in 2013 and in 2015, Maduro again trav­elled to T&T where both signed en­er­gy agree­ments and promised to boost trade and busi­ness ties.

At that time, Per­sad-Bisses­sar called the sign­ing of the en­er­gy agree­ments “his­toric.”

Dur­ing the 2015 vis­it, she said: “While we al­ready had agree­ments with re­spect to the Lo­ran Man­a­tee Field, to­day we wel­comed the sign­ing of an­oth­er agree­ment for ex­ploita­tion and de­vel­op­ment of hy­dro­car­bons in the Man­akin Cocuina field, which ex­tends across the lines be­tween T&T and Venezuela.”

Trade and tourism

Ac­cord­ing to Venezuela’s Cen­tral Bank, Venezuela’s econ­o­my con­tin­ues its fourth year of strong eco­nom­ic growth as the Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) grew by 9.3 per cent in the first quar­ter of 2025.

As re­cent­ly as Feb­ru­ary, Venezuela’s Min­is­ter of Trade Coro­mo­to Godoy met of­fi­cials from T&T’s Em­bassy in Cara­cas where both coun­tries dis­cussed the po­ten­tial of in­creas­ing busi­ness and trade ties.

T&T’s ex­ports to Venezuela were US$5.53 mil­lion dur­ing 2024, ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions COM­TRADE data­base on in­ter­na­tion­al trade.Some of T&T’s ex­ports for that year in­clud­ed es­sen­tial oils, cos­met­ics and toi­letries, ar­ti­cles of ap­par­el and plas­tics.

T&T’s im­ports from Venezuela were US$2.39 mil­lion dur­ing 2024, ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions COM­TRADE data­base on in­ter­na­tion­al trade.

Some of T&T’s im­ports from Venezuela in­clud­ed glass prod­ucts, iron and steel and bev­er­ages like spir­its and vine­gar.

In 2023, T&T ex­port­ed US$4.76 mil­lion in goods to Venezuela.

Be­tween 2018 and 2022, there was a sharp de­cline in trade be­tween T&T and Venezuela, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cial Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment sta­tis­tics.

Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics from Venezuela’s now de­funct trade agency, CEN­COEX in 2018, 22 Venezue­lan com­pa­nies ex­port­ed US$25,563,473 worth of prod­ucts to T&T. By 2022, on­ly three Venezue­lan com­pa­nies ex­port­ed US$76,317 worth of prod­ucts to T&T.

In 2023, for the first time in three years, there was a di­rect flight with 110 pas­sen­gers from T&T to Mar­gari­ta on Venezue­lan air­line Ru­ta­ca. There has been a con­tin­u­ous flow of tourists to Venezuela from T&T since then.