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Raphael John-Lall

De­spite Cu­ba’s eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties, CEO of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) Dr Ramesh Ramdeen con­tin­ues to see the north Caribbean, Span­ish-speak­ing is­land as a po­ten­tial mar­ket of 11 mil­lion peo­ple for T&T’s com­pa­nies to trade with.

Over the last few decades as Cu­ba has opened up its econ­o­my to a Chi­nese-style mixed econ­o­my, busi­ness and trade ties be­tween Cu­ba and T&T have grown.

How­ev­er, the Unit­ed States’ 64-year-old trade em­bar­go against Cu­ba has dam­aged the is­land’s econ­o­my caus­ing in­fla­tion, short­ages and elec­tric­i­ty black­outs over the last few years.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian via What­sApp, Ramdeen said T&T’s pri­vate sec­tor con­tin­ues to show in­ter­est as they look be­yond short-term chal­lenges to longer term goals.

“Some of these com­pa­nies are work­ing with pri­vate en­ti­ties in Cu­ba, so pay­ment chal­lenges are not com­mon; most com­pa­nies en­gage in cash pay­ment in ad­vance to avoid pay­ment prob­lems. Eco­nom­ic chal­lenges will have a domi­no/rip­pling ef­fect. Thank­ful­ly thus far, for the few com­pa­nies that are do­ing trade with Cu­ba con­tin­ue to do so at this time. How­ev­er, it is an­tic­i­pat­ed that if the sit­u­a­tion wors­ens, the trade is like­ly to be im­pact­ed,” he said.

He added that the TTMA mem­bers view Cu­ba as a coun­try of op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“With re­gard to Cu­ba be­ing a coun­try to do busi­ness with, some of TTMA’s mem­bers con­tin­ue to seek out op­por­tu­ni­ties for them­selves, and Cu­ba is an at­trac­tive mar­ket (11 mil­lion and over 2-3 mil­lion tourists per an­num). There are chal­lenges deal­ing with the gov­ern­ment, which is the ma­jor pur­chas­er, name­ly, US cur­ren­cy avail­abil­i­ty, they want long cred­it time etc. Trad­ing with the pri­vate sec­tor, which has been hap­pen­ing more and more in the re­cent past, is the bet­ter op­tion. But the Gov­ern­ment is the largest pur­chas­er in the coun­try, so tap­ping in­to that mar­ket is lu­cra­tive. How­ev­er, you have to get over the chal­lenges out­lined above. Hav­ing Re­pub­lic Bank there helps, but is not a panacea for all the prob­lems. And of course, the Helms-Bur­ton Act re­mains a prob­lem.”

In June 2025, the TTMA on its Face­book page post­ed pho­tos of a vis­it by a busi­ness del­e­ga­tion from Cu­ba, which the TTMA de­scribed as a “fruit­ful meet­ing.”

Ac­cord­ing to the TTMA’s Face­book page, the meet­ing was held to strength­en trade and busi­ness ties be­tween the coun­tries.

Dur­ing that meet­ing, the Cuban rep­re­sen­ta­tives met with key man­u­fac­tur­ers in­clud­ing Kalei­do­scope Paints, Blue Wa­ters Prod­ucts, RHS Mar­ket­ing, Ro­to­plas­tics, Pepe’s Mar­ket­ing and more dur­ing their short vis­it to T&T.

Ac­cord­ing to ex­porTT’s In­sta­gram page, Trinidad and To­ba­go par­tic­i­pat­ed in the 41st Ha­vana In­ter­na­tion­al Fair (FI­HAV 2025), held from No­vem­ber 24–29 at the Ex­pocu­ba fair­grounds in Ha­vana, Cu­ba.

That In­sta­gram post stat­ed: “As one of the Caribbean’s lead­ing mul­ti-sec­tor trade ex­pos, FI­HAV pro­vid­ed an im­por­tant plat­form to show­case a wide range of lo­cal­ly pro­duced goods and ser­vices, high­light­ing our strengths in en­er­gy ser­vices, man­u­fac­tur­ing, food and bev­er­age, cre­ative in­dus­tries and trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion.”

The ex­porTT post fur­ther stat­ed that aligned with glob­al pri­or­i­ties such as re­new­able en­er­gy, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, lo­gis­tics and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pres­ence re­in­forced its po­si­tion as a re­li­able re­gion­al part­ner and a com­pet­i­tive des­ti­na­tion for trade, in­vest­ment and tourism.

“Through en­gage­ments at FI­HAV 2025, Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to deep­en re­gion­al trade re­la­tions, sup­port pri­vate-sec­tor growth and pro­mote the in­no­va­tion and qual­i­ty that de­fine our na­tion­al brand.”

Ac­cord­ing to a Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try news re­lease dat­ed June 5, 2024 T&T, gen­er­al­ly a net ex­porter to Cu­ba, ex­port­ed a di­verse port­fo­lio of prod­ucts to the coun­try in 2022.

Top ex­ports in­clud­ed both en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy prod­ucts such as an­hy­drous am­mo­nia, toi­let tis­sue, glass bot­tles and aer­at­ed wa­ters.

In 2022, T&T im­port­ed ten prod­ucts from Cu­ba, in­clud­ing non-en­er­gy prod­ucts such as chlo­rine, iron con­tain­ers, cig­ars, rum, elec­tric wa­ter heaters and ve­hi­cle parts.

Busi­ness no ide­ol­o­gy

While T&T like the rest of Cari­com has tra­di­tion­al­ly vot­ed against the Unit­ed States’ 64-year-old em­bar­go against Cu­ba, T&T’s present Gov­ern­ment has open­ly crit­i­cised Cu­ba’s po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sys­tem.

Speak­ing at the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in St. Kitts and Nevis on Tues­day night, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused Cu­ba of hav­ing a “dic­ta­to­r­i­al regime” and said she sup­ports a cap­i­tal­ist eco­nom­ic sys­tem.

“T&T will not sup­port a dic­ta­tor­ship in Cu­ba or any­where else…for us in T&T, we must have cap­i­tal­ism,” she said.

On Fri­day, Guardian Me­dia pub­lished a state­ment by the Cuban Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain, in which the Cubans thanked T&T for its sol­i­dar­i­ty dur­ing what the Em­bassy said is a “dif­fi­cult” time for their coun­try.

A for­mer trade min­is­ter in the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, Vas­ant Bharath, said whether one agrees or dis­agrees with Cu­ba’s po­lit­i­cal sys­tem, T&T’s re­la­tion­ship with Ha­vana has nev­er been about im­port­ing ide­ol­o­gy, it has al­ways been about prac­ti­cal co­op­er­a­tion ground­ed in Caribbean sol­i­dar­i­ty.

He point­ed out that since 1972, when Caribbean na­tions first es­tab­lished diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with Cu­ba de­spite in­tense ex­ter­nal pres­sure, Cari­com has up­held a sim­ple prin­ci­ple, that T&T’s for­eign pol­i­cy must re­flect Caribbean in­ter­ests. That prin­ci­ple has guid­ed decades of en­gage­ment root­ed in mu­tu­al ben­e­fit.

He then men­tioned eco­nom­ic and oth­er types of co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the two coun­tries.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go has his­tor­i­cal­ly been one of Cu­ba’s key re­gion­al part­ners un­der Cari­com’s trade and co­op­er­a­tion frame­work. Most no­tably, Cuban med­ical pro­fes­sion­als have sup­port­ed health­care sys­tems across the Caribbean, fill­ing crit­i­cal short­ages in rur­al and spe­cial­ist care and pro­vid­ing in­dis­pens­able as­sis­tance dur­ing crises such as the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Cu­ba has al­so ex­tend­ed schol­ar­ships, dis­as­ter re­lief sup­port and tech­ni­cal train­ing that strength­ened our re­gion’s hu­man cap­i­tal and agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.”

At the same time, he said the hu­man­i­tar­i­an con­se­quences of the decades-long US em­bar­go on Cu­ba are un­de­ni­able.

“Re­stric­tions af­fect­ing fu­el, med­i­cine and fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions have se­vere im­pacts on or­di­nary Cuban fam­i­lies. Cari­com’s con­sis­tent vote at the Unit­ed Na­tions against the em­bar­go re­flects op­po­si­tion to mea­sures that in­flict hard­ship on civil­ians of every colour and creed, not en­dorse­ment of any po­lit­i­cal mod­el. None of this negates the geopo­lit­i­cal re­al­i­ties.”

He re­mind­ed the pub­lic that the Unit­ed States re­mains T&T’s largest trad­ing part­ner and a crit­i­cal source of in­vest­ment and that US sanc­tions leg­is­la­tion car­ries ex­trater­ri­to­r­i­al im­pli­ca­tions that can cre­ate le­gal and fi­nan­cial risks for lo­cal busi­ness­es.

“En­gage­ment with Cu­ba must there­fore be trans­par­ent, care­ful­ly struc­tured and com­pli­ant with in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions. The ques­tion be­fore us is not com­mu­nism ver­sus cap­i­tal­ism. It is whether Trinidad and To­ba­go will con­tin­ue to ex­er­cise a ma­ture, in­de­pen­dent for­eign pol­i­cy that bal­ances prin­ci­ple with prag­ma­tism or will we be­come just an ap­pendage to the US.”

Fi­nal­ly, he said a re­spon­si­ble ap­proach recog­nis­es that en­gage­ment with Cu­ba serves tan­gi­ble re­gion­al in­ter­ests. It al­lows Cari­com states to en­gage Cu­ba con­struc­tive­ly on gov­er­nance, trans­paren­cy and re­form through di­a­logue rather than iso­la­tion.

“Lead­er­ship re­quires se­ri­ous­ness. It re­quires re­sist­ing the temp­ta­tion to triv­i­al­ize com­plex is­sues for po­lit­i­cal ap­plause. T&T should con­tin­ue its re­la­tion­ship with Cu­ba, strate­gi­cal­ly and re­spon­si­bly whilst safe­guard­ing na­tion­al in­ter­ests and up­hold­ing Cari­com’s long­stand­ing com­mit­ment to sov­er­eign de­ci­sion-mak­ing. Small states like ours, nav­i­gate pow­er­ful cur­rents not with slo­gans, but with steady hands. That is the stan­dard of lead­er­ship our re­gion de­serves.”