Trinidad and Tobago is celebrating gas the export arbitrage may divert before it ever reaches Point Lisas.THE DATA POINTIn 2026, natural gas trades near US$2.80 per MMBtu at the US Gulf benchmark, against roughly US$21 in Europe and US$21.50 in Asia (figures per energy analyst Dr Einstein Millán Arcia, Sunday Business Guardian, 23 August 2026). That is a delivered-market spread of more than seven to one.For Shell and BP, who each hold 45 per cent of Atlantic LNG, that gap is not a background fact. It is the number that decides where the Venezuelan gas goes, and it does not point to Point Lisas.

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 The Data Point 

 On 24 July 2026, the United States imposed Section 301 tariffs of 10% or 12.5% on 60 trading partners that together account for 99.4% of US imports. Trinidad and Tobago was placed at 10%. The Bahamas, Guyana, and the Dominican Republic were placed at 12.5%. And according to the Ministry of Foreign and CARICOM Affairs, more than 85% of T&T’s exports to the US, its energy and petrochemical lines, were exempted at zero.The headline number is not the story. The gap between 10% and 12.5%, and the exemptions sitting beneath both, is where your actual cost lives. 

 The Diagnosis...To read the rest visit: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/2026-us-tariff-split-caribbean-boards-misreading-special-simon-ehk7e

 Trinidad and Tobago is importing the tradable industries it could be building, exporting, and owning.Between 2011 and 2023, its services imports surged to USD 3,300 million while exports never crossed USD 1,300 million. The gap has not closed since.Part 1 established that the displacement is real and measurable. Part 2 shows where it is happening, and what is at stake for the firms, investors, and institutions positioned to reverse it.

Tradable Services Versus Non-Tradable Services..Want to read more?

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Three out of four workers in Trinidad and Tobago are employed in services, and the country still runs a services trade deficit north of USD 500 million. Translation: this economy is fully staffed to do the work, and paying someone abroad to do it anyway. 

 Introduction 

The concept that Dutch disease has been a continuous burden on Trinidad and Tobago’s economy is one rightly advanced by local economic thought-leaders. Defined as the circumstances where a natural resource boom leads to the deindustrialisation of non-energy sectors, typically manufacturing and agriculture, Dutch disease is a complex phenomenon engaging several economic models. Among these is Baumol’s cost disease, where salary increases in productive sectors, for Trinidad and Tobago the energy sector during boom periods, drive unsustainable growth in services. 

 In these models, services are treated as non-tradable: domestically consumed outputs unable to compete in foreign markets. This framing is a relic of the original Dutch disease model of the late 1970s, and it is precisely here that local application of the theory becomes questionable. 

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 Every Caribbean startup ecosystem falls in the lowest level of the Start Up development ladder. Commissioned by IDB Lab and the European Union and produced by Startup Genome for the CaribEquity Innovation assessment report — Caribbean countries sit in the Activation Phase: the lowest rung of a four-stage development ladder. All 15 territories. None has reached Early Activation. None is approaching Globalization.

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