Raphael John-Lall

A pos­si­ble shift in the T&T Gov­ern­ment’s tra­di­tion­al trad­ing ties away from Cari­com in favour of new part­ners is gen­er­at­ing de­bates not on­ly in T&T but across the re­gion.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed Cari­com as an “un­re­li­able part­ner” to T&T as mem­ber states failed to sup­port T&T’s overt pro-US po­si­tion in its con­flict with Venezuela. Her com­ments re­sult­ed in crit­i­cism at home and across the re­gion even elic­it­ing a re­sponse from the Prime Min­is­ter of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Gas­ton Browne.

For­mer Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor and for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter, Win­ston Dook­er­an, agrees with the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to look for new trade part­ners out­side of Cari­com.

Dook­er­an told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that T&T has every right to ex­pand its hori­zons and in­crease its trade part­ner­ships with coun­tries out­side of the Cari­com re­gion.

“The prime min­is­ter should not iso­late Cari­com, but she is right to look be­yond the re­gion - to ex­pand it, and move to­wards a deep­er con­ver­gence and em­brace strate­gic part­ners be­yond Cari­com. It re­quires a mul­ti-aligned for­eign pol­i­cy that is al­so an­chored in our eco­nom­ic re­la­tion­ship with the US.”

He al­so ar­gued that in his view, the re­cent ac­tion of the Gov­ern­ment to in­crease du­ties on al­co­holic prod­ucts im­port­ed in­to the coun­try does not in any way breach the Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas.

“As such, the time to ex­pand Cari­com to cater for the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Time for Ac­tion re­port, which was done some time ago at the be­hest of Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment, may be re­viewed in the world of ‘mul­ti-po­lar chaos’ in which we are now in. This does not rep­re­sent a breach, le­gal or oth­er­wise, of the Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas. A new op­por­tu­ni­ty, in a strange way, may emerge for a dif­fer­ent Cari­com.”

Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas

The Prime Min­is­ter of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da said that T&T’s Gov­ern­ment’s move to raise du­ties on some prod­ucts from oth­er Cari­com mem­bers could be in breach of the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas and warned of the “need to strength­en re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion, not frac­ture it—es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the cur­rent geopo­lit­i­cal land­scape and cer­tain sit­u­a­tions in the south­ern Caribbean that could desta­bilise the re­gion.”

Browne’s com­ments fol­lowed T&T’s an­nounce­ment that im­port du­ties on Cari­com-made malt bev­er­ages, beer, rum, cig­a­rettes and to­bac­co would be in­creased by 100 per cent.

Plan­ning Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh ad­mit­ted that the mea­sure re­spond­ed to con­cerns from the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, which said the pre­vi­ous tar­iff struc­ture put them at an un­fair dis­ad­van­tage. How­ev­er, if it goes be­yond health pro­tec­tion, it could bring in­to fo­cus T&T’s oblig­a­tions un­der the Treaty and may con­sti­tute a vi­o­la­tion.

Browne may well have a case.

The Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas was adopt­ed in 2001, as an up­date of the found­ing Treaty signed in 1973, with the ob­jec­tive of trans­form­ing the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty and Com­mon Mar­ket (Cari­com) in­to the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME), This is still very much a work in progress but re­mains at the heart of Cari­com’s cur­rent eco­nom­ic in­te­gra­tion ef­forts.

Chap­ter Five of the Re­vised Treaty is fair­ly clear on Cari­com trade pol­i­cy and trade lib­er­al­i­sa­tion, with sev­er­al ar­ti­cles ded­i­cat­ed to the over­ar­ch­ing goal of the sus­tained growth of in­tra-Com­mu­ni­ty and in­ter­na­tion­al trade and mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial ex­change of goods and ser­vices among the Mem­ber States.

In this re­spect, Treaty oblig­a­tions in­clude:

- The elim­i­na­tion of ex­ist­ing re­stric­tions on im­ports and ex­ports of goods of Com­mu­ni­ty ori­gin (Ar­ti­cle 78, para­graph 4);

- Re­frain­ing from “trade poli­cies and prac­tices, the ob­ject or ef­fect of which is to dis­tort com­pe­ti­tion, frus­trate free move­ment of goods and ser­vices, or oth­er­wise nul­li­fy or im­pair ben­e­fits to which oth­er Mem­ber States are en­ti­tled un­der this Treaty” (Ar­ti­cle 79, para­graph 2);

- Not im­pos­ing du­ties on goods of Com­mu­ni­ty ori­gin (Ar­ti­cle 87, para­graph 1);

- Not ap­ply­ing “di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly to im­port­ed goods of Com­mu­ni­ty ori­gin any fis­cal charges in ex­cess of those ap­plied di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly to like do­mes­tic goods, or oth­er­wise ap­ply such charges so as to pro­tect like do­mes­tic goods” (Ar­ti­cle 90, para­graph 1).

It is in this con­text that Browne’s com­ments have been read by some com­men­ta­tors as sug­gest­ing that T&T is en­gag­ing in pro­tec­tion­ism and un­der­min­ing the re­gion­al project.

More­over, this lat­est move by T&T, fol­low­ing re­cent ac­tions and state­ments that have put Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Gov­ern­ment at odds with Cari­com po­si­tions, has added to con­cerns among re­gion­al gov­ern­ments, diplo­mats and an­a­lysts that T&T is dis­tanc­ing it­self from Cari­com.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, re­tired Guyanese am­bas­sador to the Unit­ed States and the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) and cur­rent Fel­low at the Caribbean Pol­i­cy Con­sor­tium, Riyad In­sanal­ly, who was the OAS rep­re­sen­ta­tive in T&T from 2008 to 2016, ex­pressed sur­prise at sig­nals em­a­nat­ing from Port-of-Spain that could hurt the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion process.

Stat­ing that he is a com­mit­ted re­gion­al­ist, In­sanal­ly said Cari­com, as a com­mu­ni­ty of sov­er­eign but small states, has no oth­er op­tion, —es­pe­cial­ly in the con­text of asym­met­ri­cal re­la­tion­ships in an in­creas­ing­ly volatile world, with uni­lat­er­al­ism and trans­ac­tion­al bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions threat­en­ing the sov­er­eign­ty of small states—but to con­tin­ue sub­scrib­ing to the prin­ci­ple of strength in uni­ty.

He warned: “Any pur­suit of na­tion­al in­ter­ests, with ap­par­ent dis­re­gard for the re­gion­al good, is a path fraught with risk and threat­ens to un­der­mine the strength of the col­lec­tive. If T&T is in­tent on fol­low­ing this path, then the re­gion will be hurt. As a found­ing mem­ber of Cari­com and one that has led in many of the Com­mu­ni­ty’s achieve­ments and the in­ter­na­tion­al po­si­tion­ing of the re­gion, T&T’s ac­tions have been, and are still, very con­se­quen­tial.”

Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion im­por­tant

For­mer trade min­is­ter and in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial con­sul­tant, Vas­ant Bharath, said the prime min­is­ter has a du­ty to safe­guard T&T’s eco­nom­ic fu­ture, and part of that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is en­sur­ing that the coun­try is not over­ly de­pen­dent on any sin­gle mar­ket or bloc.

“Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of our trad­ing re­la­tion­ships is not on­ly pru­dent—it is es­sen­tial. Around the world, coun­tries are ad­just­ing to shift­ing glob­al dy­nam­ics, and we must do the same if we are to re­main com­pet­i­tive and se­cure long-term growth.”

At the same time, he ad­vised that T&T must con­tin­ue strong ties with its Cari­com part­ners.

He al­so ad­dressed Prime Min­is­ter’s Browne’s con­cerns.

“Any con­cern raised by a fel­low Cari­com mem­ber state must be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly. If there is an al­le­ga­tion of a treaty breach, that is a mat­ter for tech­ni­cal ex­am­i­na­tion, not po­lit­i­cal rhetoric. I can­not say whether Prime Min­is­ter Browne’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion is cor­rect—that de­ter­mi­na­tion lies with the ex­perts tasked with en­sur­ing that our ac­tions re­main con­sis­tent with our oblig­a­tions.”

He added that what he can say is that T&T has al­ways op­er­at­ed with­in a rules-based frame­work, and he ex­pects that if there is any mis­un­der­stand­ing or di­ver­gence of view, it will be ad­dressed through the mech­a­nisms es­tab­lished for ex­act­ly this pur­pose.

Bharath al­so said that Prime Min­is­ter Browne’s com­ments re­flect a “deep­er ten­sion” with­in Cari­com—one that has ex­ist­ed for some time—be­tween the sov­er­eign right of mem­ber states to pur­sue do­mes­tic pol­i­cy ob­jec­tives, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas like pub­lic health and tax­a­tion, and the col­lec­tive com­mit­ments of re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion.

“Whether his warn­ing car­ries le­gal force will de­pend on in­ter­pre­ta­tion, on the will of mem­ber states and on how the re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tions ap­proach the mat­ter. These is­sues are best re­solved through struc­tured di­a­logue, not po­lit­i­cal back-and-forth.”