00:00It's a wait-and-see approach for Trinidad and Tobago as it relates to the inauguration
00:05of Donald Trump next Monday.
00:08Already it is expected the president will issue a flurry of executive orders to speed
00:13up the deportation process on the very day he takes office.
00:17But international relations expert Dr. Anthony Gonzalez says we have to wait and see.
00:22So we really don't know.
00:23It's too early in a sense to say clearly what they're going to do.
00:28We can probably say yes that they're going to focus on deporting undocumented migrants
00:35and they're also going to try to shut down the border and that to some extent will be
00:40there and they're going to boost the forces necessary to do that.
00:44But we don't know exactly how far it is going to go.
00:47But this intention has not had, Dr. Gonzalez points out, the full support and can lead
00:54to a negative fallout.
00:55As you see, for example, there's a lot of approach, even within Trump group there, must
01:03condemn concerning about the migrants because a lot of the business people who are with
01:08Trump are also concerned about the impact that that could have on their businesses.
01:14You know, you need migrants in construction, you need migrants in the hospitality industry,
01:20you need migrants in agriculture and so forth.
01:22So one has to be careful how far one goes against it because you could cause, you could
01:28destroy the economy and you could cause inflation and so on.
01:33Even as it relates to Venezuela, our closest neighbor, the former head of the UAE International
01:38Relations Department says it's not clear how Trump will proceed on the backdrop of his
01:442016 maximum pressure approach where the U.S. tried to change the regime in Caracas.
01:50But that did not work.
01:52The regime in Caracas is pretty well entrenched with a lot of military support and popular
01:57support in a certain way.
01:59So that over time, they didn't, they weren't able to pursue that with any success.
02:05And of course, when Biden came, Biden sought to make some kind of accommodation with Maduro.
02:13Trump, he says, will be wary of how the migrant situation will impact the U.S.
02:19America is not the America it was, let's say, in the 70s or the 80s and so forth, where
02:26you could easily send troops and remove governments and so forth.
02:31I think those days are over in the sense that they will be met by tremendous opposition
02:37and they know the consequences of it, as they have seen in Afghanistan, as they have seen
02:42in the Middle East and so forth.
02:44So I don't think that too many people are eager to send forces into countries in the
02:48region as was years ago.
02:51I think they probably see it much more as how they could use sanctions, how they could
02:54use threats and so on to change the regime.
02:58But what the harsh sanctions imposed by Trump in the past proved to Venezuela, Dr. Gonzales
03:03says, is that the South American country can survive without U.S. backing.
03:09And what about TNT and maintaining good relations with the U.S.?
03:13I don't know what's the reason why we don't have an ambassador in Washington.
03:17To me, it's hard to believe that all this time we haven't put an ambassador there.
03:20But that's another question.
03:21We have a charges affair there and there's an American ambassador in Port of Spain.
03:27So there's representation, there's scope for discussion.
03:30Dr. Gonzales does not expect the U.S. to sanction TNT's dealings with Venezuela as
03:35a country's transactions with the South American country is not really a threat, he
03:40says, to the U.S.
03:42I don't think it's in the U.S. interest for us to not have access to Venezuelan gas
03:47and for that to affect our development here, because that could provoke instability in
03:53this country to the extent that we are not able to provide people with jobs or we're
03:57not able to sustain our social services and public services and so forth.
04:02That could generate instability, which is not in the U.S. interest.
04:05So I would think a balanced approach to get access...
