PM asks Trump for ease
Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has written a letter to United States (US) President Donald Trump hoping CARICOM will be exempt from the hikes that will occur if he imposes fines as high as $1 million on Chinese-made container ships that call on US ports.
She said if his fight against China’s increasing dominance in the shipbuilding industry continues using that strategy, it could have disastrous consequences for the region.
Mottley, who is chair of CARICOM, made the comment recently during the official launch of Courts’ Welches Superstore at W Plaza in St Thomas.
The Prime Minister returned late Wednesday from Jamaica where she and other CARICOM Heads of Government met with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“What we potentially face with the announced cess or levy on ships made in China will have serious and deleterious consequences for the commerce in Barbados, the Caribbean and, as I said to Secretary Rubio yesterday [Thursday], also to Florida.
“Florida in a very real sense is the engine of commerce in the Caribbean region. The Caribbean depends on much seven-day supply of food, vegetables, of critical supplies, pieces of equipment, spare parts, all kinds of things. So to have this disrupted purely because of the intervention of a statutory or an executive order that will lead to an increased cost of supplies will hurt not just us on the receiving end, but will hurt those as well who are making money from the logistics in Florida. It is likely to lead to people looking for other routes that don’t carry the same prohibitive costs for movement of goods,” she said.
She is hoping Trump will be understanding of the region’s plight.
“I trust and pray that alone, with the letter I wrote on behalf of the Caribbean Community to President Trump, will lead to some kind of exception for this region,” she said.
Her sentiments have been echoed by several others, including chair of the Barbados Private Sector Association Trisha Tannis, president of the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) James Clarke and Tropical Shipping’s president and chief executive officer Tim Martin. The latter testified in Washington DC on Monday before the US Trade Representative (USTR) and said the proposed tariffs would severely affect American-owned shipping companies as well as US exporters and Caribbean businesses that ship with Tropical.
Tropical Shipping operates out of the Port of Palm Beach, Florida, and nine of its 19 vessels were built in China up to 25 years ago.
“The US shipping industry serving the Caribbean cannot absorb the additional costs of the proposed port fees, which would have significant economic consequences,” Martin testified. “Instead of strengthening American competitiveness, these port fees would push American-owned carriers like Tropical out of business.”
Tropical Shipping also explained in a statement how the proposed increase would affect the types of containers.
“The average vessel serving the Caribbean region is 1 100 Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs). If the fees in the proposed action are applied to these smaller vessels, we would have to double our freight rates, with an average increase of US$2 500 per 40-foot container.
“As a comparison, applying the proposed $1 million fee to a vessel that calls on a single US port directly from China carrying 16 000 TEUs would increase the cost per 40-foot container by only US$125.”
Clarke said the BCCI recently met with members to discuss this issue and was also engaging with the Caribbean Private Sector Organisation (CPSO).
“The Chamber had a meeting recently with all of the retailers and distributors to discuss this. The Chamber has asked those members to prepare written information to send us and the Chamber will collate. We then feed that through to the Barbados Private Sector Association and then that goes on to the CPSO.
“Because, as far as I know, [the CPSO] is engaging with the US Trade Representative to explain the impact of these proposed fees on the Caribbean. The shipping lines are doing the same as well, because they’ve also done their math and they realise that if this thing goes into play, it’s going to cripple their business,” Clarke said.
“The point is basically that, to the US, why are you doing this? When you apply the US$1 million to a container vessel that holds 8 000 or 9 000, 40-foot containers, it’s a small amount. But the containers that come into the Caribbean, you may have 500 on a ship or maybe 1 000 20-foot containers. The cost of shipping then increases dramatically. And if the shipping costs go up too much, the shipping lines are going to struggle and they’re going to pass on the costs to us.”
Tannis, who is also managing director at Courts, had similar concerns. She said if the cess was imposed it would compound the issues facing the region.
“Certainly if this cess is levied, the implications are obvious. The Caribbean is an archipelago, very much like the Cook Islands and they face very similar issues, which is that you’re completely or wholly dependent or significantly dependent on imports.
“We have other issues in terms of sustainability issues. So there’s a carbon tax and there’s fuel emission taxes and so on that are being talked about. All of those essentially are not going to be absorbed by the shipping companies who are going to be paying those bills,” Tannis said.
The post PM asks Trump for ease appeared first on nationnews.com.