By GHK Lall- U.S tariffs. There is the good and there is the bad in what is really the Trump Tariff Act. Guyana did better than Brazil, China, India and South Africa. But not as good as Bosnia, Guatemala, and the Falkland Islands. Yes, the Falkland Islands with all those bizarre creatures in the Galapagos nearby did better than Guyana.
I skimmed through the Caribbean Islands and Guyana has Trinidad and Tobago for company in the 15% bracket. This country is also lumped in the same 15% category as Venezuela. Don’t say! Yeah, but there it is. Guyana has sanctioned Venezuela as part of its tariff family. I struggle to understand, what to make of all of this topsy-turvy, slapdash, erratic business.
I note the 15% tariff slapped on Venezuela, surprised that’s all, considering that its people misbehaved. But Guyana and Venezuela in the same tariff box ticked? Sure, 15% beats 38%, but nah maan; dah stil caan bee. Donald Trump can be unsteady and uneven, but he knows the difference between Guyana and Venezuela. Chevron is over there; Exxon’s here.
Who has the bigger voice, heavier weight? Guyana’s Jagdeo and his band of brothers have been the most well-behaved schoolboys in the history of US relationships worldwide. No pushback, no bad behavior, no trouble. Sweet as sheep. And this is what they get for their labors, 15% on the nose. Life is just not fair.
After all the public subservience and self-humiliations, this is where the tariff road terminates. Last year, around the time of the November election, the PPP took out full-page ads in the media. Those were preceded by, and then followed by, crawling and groveling on the belly in the muds of Guyana, and look at the reward. Trump is the best. Trump is good. Trump is god.
Frankly, speaking, after that unprecedented display of self-degrading by the PPP Government, and its paid army of sewage sellers of Donald J. Trump, Guyana ought to have done better than a measly 15%. There was that other grand American fellow, with Guyana’s boy genius head of state, who both had a great time scratching each other’s back with the special relationship between this country and Uncle Sam.
If I had an Uncle like that, and after all brownnosing and (sucking up of a particular kind) done to him, and 15% is what is received, then disowning had to follow, as sure as the tide ebbs, and the tide flows. Why, the PPP Government even spent the tax dollars of poor Guyanese to recruit expensive American lobbyists to do more brownnosing for them (it is called marketing) and 15% is the kick in the groin that this country got. Could the recently verbose US Ambassador to Guyana, Excellency Nicole D. Theriot break her fast (again) and help with a little word or two of translation, please?
With that out of the way, I turn to Guyana’s omnipotent private sector. What happened to its tongue, did cat bite it off? It is always the US this and the US that, and all luminous extravagance, so it can’t retreat into laryngitis country now. If there is a group of Guyanese that would feel the 15% lash, it is the private sector. Let’s hear it from those big, bad boys. Now is not the time to surrender to inferiority complexes, when profits are at stake.
Then, Guyana biggest bad boy, the invincible and infallible and irreproachable, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo has to be at this weigh-in called by me. He must have something to say, with his nonoil economy jazz ensemble, should oil prices go down, now that there is this 15% Trumpian slap down. I would hate for it to be a case of ‘never has so much been sacrificed and surrendered for so brutally little as a result.
Once again, I am reminded about that big power axiom: interests take precedence over friends, even those supposedly partaking in a special relationship. And here was I thinking and betting on the likes of Exxon’s Darren Woods and Rex Tillerson to pull a chestnut or two for Guyana out of the overheated Trumpian furnace. Some fair-weather partners are they, too. I wouldn’t worry too much, though. One of the inexorable laws of physics is that what goes up must come down. Tariffs do not have an exemption.
Finally, and generally speaking, with tariffs at various levels, some higher than 15%, I foresee a dent in the demand for oil. Now that could be a two-fisted wallop for Guyanese. When countries export less, sell less, they buy less oil. To ship what to where? Or to modify that hardline, how much with prices lashing and bashing? I’m not worried about China and India; they can take care of themselves. Guyana is my worry.
