Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

UNC Sen­a­tor Damien Ly­der has ex­pressed in­ter­est in US Re­pub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Don­ald Trump’s plan to low­er tax­es and re­move bu­reau­cra­cy from gov­ern­ment en­ti­ties’ op­er­a­tions in or­der to en­cour­age busi­ness to re­turn to the US.

“It’s caught my in­ter­est since T&T al­so has is­sues that re­quire sim­i­lar at­ten­tion to get our sit­u­a­tion work­ing prop­er­ly af­ter con­tin­u­ous mis­man­age­ment by the PNM Gov­ern­ment,” Ly­der added yes­ter­day.

“I’ll be mon­i­tor­ing the up­com­ing 2025 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion to see how the Fi­nance Min­is­ter han­dles these is­sues, which have sig­nif­i­cant in­put in­to T&T’s fu­ture path, and my re­ply to him will be tai­lored to suit.”

Ly­der com­ment­ed on Trump’s ad­dress at the cli­max of the Re­pub­li­can Par­ty’s  con­ven­tion in Mil­wau­kee on Thurs­day. 

Trump’s 92-minute speech start­ed with his ac­count of the at­tempt on his life last Sat­ur­day dur­ing a ral­ly in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia. Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, had fired shots at Trump, one of which grazed Trump’s ear. How­ev­er, one spec­ta­tor was killed and two oth­ers in­jured. Crooks was shot dead by a Se­cret Ser­vice coun­ter­sniper. 

Yes­ter­day, US re­ports re­vealed Crooks had pic­tures of both Trump and US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and oth­er US of­fi­cials on his phone and that he’d checked the dates of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Na­tion­al Con­ven­tion as well as Trump’s ap­pear­ances. The De­moc­rats’ con­ven­tion is in Au­gust. Crooks had lived 43 miles from the Penn­syl­va­nia ral­ly where he fired on Trump. 

On the Re­pub­li­can con­ven­tion’s tone of con­fi­dence and the De­moc­rats’ is­sues with Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, Ly­der said he wouldn’t com­ment on US elec­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties. “I wish them equal­ly both well in their elec­tion com­ing up,” he added.

“I’m cer­tain we (UNC) will work well with whichev­er ad­min­is­tra­tion takes pow­er in the US af­ter their No­vem­ber Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.”

“How­ev­er, where  Mr Trump’s ad­dress was con­cerned, I was quite in­ter­est­ed in as­pects of his pre­sen­ta­tion on low­er­ing the tax­a­tion rate for Amer­i­can and in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness to en­cour­age and in­cen­tivise them to re­turn to the US  and  grow its econ­o­my,” Ly­der added.

“That’s some­thing I’ve spoke of re­gard­ing our coun­try’s dire sit­u­a­tion where peo­ple and econ­o­my are both ex­pe­ri­enc­ing prob­lems with the PNM Gov­ern­ment’s con­tin­u­ous in­crease of tax­es.So much so that for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI) has left T&T to the tune of US$1.5B  due to the shut­down of com­pa­nies, we’ve cal­cu­lat­ed. I feel pas­sion­ate­ly about low­er­ing tax­a­tion to halt the con­tin­u­ous de­cline in the ease of do­ing busi­ness in T&T,”