Un­der­stand­ing shift­ing glob­al pow­er dy­nam­ics and eco­nom­ic in­flu­ences re­quires clar­i­ty and con­text. Cari­com con­sists of 15 mem­ber states and five as­so­ciate mem­bers. Ac­cord­ing to the World Pop­u­la­tion Re­view (WPR), the pop­u­la­tion is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 18 mil­lion peo­ple (Trinidad and To­ba­go: 1.5 mil­lion), though fig­ures can vary slight­ly by source and year, rang­ing from around 16 mil­lion to over 18 mil­lion across dif­fer­ent re­ports. The Unit­ed Na­tions has 193 mem­bers, and the WPR es­ti­mates the world pop­u­la­tion at 8.29 bil­lion.  

The Unit­ed States has a pop­u­la­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 330 mil­lion peo­ple, the largest econ­o­my, and the world’s most pow­er­ful mil­i­tary. Cur­rent­ly, it has a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on world events. But things are chang­ing. Based on pur­chas­ing pow­er par­i­ty, the IMF es­ti­mates that by 2028, Chi­na will be the largest econ­o­my, fol­lowed by the US, In­dia, and Japan in that or­der. By then, four out of the top six coun­tries in the world will be in Asia (Chi­na, Japan, In­dia, In­done­sia).

The ef­fect is a re­dis­tri­b­u­tion of eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence, which is chang­ing in­ter­na­tion­al dy­nam­ics and has led to a mul­ti­po­lar world. The fo­cus is shift­ing to the In­do-Pa­cif­ic re­gion, dri­ven by eco­nom­ic growth, tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vances, and de­mo­graph­ic changes. The re­gion is home to 75 per cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion. These dy­nam­ics ex­plain Barack Oba­ma’s 2011 “piv­ot to Asia” speech.

In his sec­ond term, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is at­tempt­ing to re­verse this dy­nam­ic by ag­gres­sive­ly as­sert­ing US pow­er to de­stroy what is eu­phemisti­cal­ly called the “rules-based or­der”, up­end­ing trade treaties by im­pos­ing pun­ish­ing tar­iffs on al­lies, friends, and foes, ei­ther to redi­rect trade or as a co­er­cive in­stru­ment of for­eign pol­i­cy. He has ex­it­ed the Paris Cli­mate Agree­ment, the WHO, 66 in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, re­assert­ed the Mon­roe Doc­trine, threat­ened neigh­bour­ing coun­tries, ab­duct­ed Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent and is pur­su­ing the ac­qui­si­tion of Green­land by fair means or foul.

In the US, Pres­i­dent Trump has ig­nored laws and norms de­signed to main­tain the bal­ance of pow­er in gov­ern­ment. He has slashed the fed­er­al work­force, cut fund­ing to uni­ver­si­ties and in­ter­na­tion­al pro­grammes, fired tech­nocrats meant to be in­de­pen­dent, and un­der­mined the in­de­pen­dence of the Fed­er­al Re­serve and the De­part­ment of Jus­tice.

In Davos last week, Cana­da’s Prime Min­is­ter in­ter­pret­ed Pres­i­dent Trump’s be­hav­iour as a sign that rules-based mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism is tru­ly over and ar­tic­u­lat­ed a role for mid­dle pow­ers. The Eu­ro­pean Cen­tral Bank Pres­i­dent Chris­tine La­garde said, “... we are see­ing the cur­tain come up on a new world or­der.” The cen­tre-right Econ­o­mist Mag­a­zine not­ed that Pres­i­dent Trump’s Davos speech “be­trayed an omi­nous con­tempt for Eu­rope.” If Pres­i­dent Trump views “mid­dle pow­ers” con­temp­tu­ous­ly, how does he view small, vul­ner­a­ble states like T&T?  We do not yet un­der­stand how this new world or­der will evolve, but Pres­i­dent Trump thinks he has all the cards.

This part­ly ex­plains why T&T’s for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tion has moved from non-align­ment to cheer­lead­ing.

In­vestors and busi­ness­men do not want to lose mon­ey and will find prag­mat­ic ways to sur­vive and adapt in the face of ad­ver­si­ty. Bad times do not last for­ev­er.  How and in which sec­tors should one in­vest, giv­en the high un­cer­tain­ty and volatil­i­ty? The re­sults of PWC’s Glob­al CEO Sur­vey (95 coun­tries) cov­er­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4,500 CEOs show that on­ly 30 per cent were very con­fi­dent of their com­pa­ny’s growth prospects. The fig­ure ris­es to 50 per cent when the out­look is pro­ject­ed for­ward to three years. This is broad­ly con­sis­tent with the cau­tious out­look de­scribed in the Busi­ness Out­look Sur­vey done by the TT Cham­ber of Com­merce and the ALJGSB busi­ness school. Nev­er­the­less, the IMF’s world eco­nom­ic out­look projects growth of 3.3 per cent in 2026. There are sev­er­al chal­lenges and un­der­ly­ing fragili­ties af­fect­ing the T&T econ­o­my. The first is a for­eign-ex­change chal­lenge, a symp­tom of deep­er is­sues. The com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage which T&T once had in the nat­ur­al gas busi­ness has all but dis­ap­peared. Gas is no longer cheap and plen­ti­ful.

There are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 21 petro­chem­i­cal plants and four LNG plants in Trinidad, but not enough gas to keep all ful­ly op­er­a­tional and prof­itable at cur­rent gas pro­duc­tion vol­umes. Hard de­ci­sions must be made about the avail­able gas sup­ply, how gas con­tracts will be al­lo­cat­ed, and at what price. Even if the Man­a­tee and Drag­on gas fields were com­mis­sioned to­mor­row, they would help T&T’s eco­nom­ic out­look in the medi­um term, but would not solve its long-term com­pet­i­tive po­si­tion. Nat­ur­al gas fields can­not be re­plen­ished. That is why ex­plo­ration ac­tiv­i­ty must be con­tin­u­ous, and new wells must be de­vel­oped at an eco­nom­ic price.  

The pri­vate sec­tor can­not change ex­ter­nal tar­iffs or in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket volatil­i­ty. It must there­fore adapt to both do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al con­di­tions. NGC’s de­ci­sion to in­crease prices to lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers by an im­me­di­ate 60 per cent is ill-con­ceived. The man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is too small to com­pete with glob­al com­peti­tors ex­cept in niche mar­kets. Since most raw ma­te­ri­als are im­port­ed, busi­ness­es must fo­cus on high­er-val­ue-added prod­ucts to achieve high­er con­tri­bu­tion mar­gins. That change will re­quire dif­fer­ent skill sets and ca­pac­i­ties, need­ing time and ef­fort to de­vel­op.

Oth­er key is­sues in­clude the State’s ef­fi­cient pro­vi­sion of pub­lic goods (roads, health­care, le­gal sys­tem, se­cu­ri­ty, and an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment). This re­quires a sta­ble fis­cal po­si­tion and a rea­son­able debt-to-GDP ra­tio. To achieve this, na­tion­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty must be im­proved. There­fore, all fu­ture wage ne­go­ti­a­tions should be based on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty im­prove­ments.  

Fail­ure to main­tain a sta­ble fis­cal sit­u­a­tion ex­pos­es the coun­try to great risk.

Mar­i­ano Browne is the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness