00:00While some are looking on at US President Donald Trump's policy changes
00:04with a measure of apprehension, the local business community believes TNT stands
00:10to benefit from the change in administration. I think a lot of what
00:14we're seeing if we could take away or strip away the politics behind it and
00:18strip away the gentleman that's delivering the message and really look
00:22at it from an economic perspective to be honest a lot of it makes sense when you
00:27peel it back and a lot of what he's doing is to try to improve the state
00:32that America is in. As a neighbor and as someone nearby we believe that there's a
00:38lot of potential and a lot of opportunity that's going to come out of
00:41these changes for Trinidad and Tobago and the region. Among Trump's policies is
00:46a move to increase the United States fossil fuel production. One local energy
00:51expert believes here too TNT can find leverage by using or more than a century
00:57of petroleum sector expertise to provide rather than import energy
01:02services. The most immediate opportunity was the United States because that was
01:06and continues to be a growing market and we just simply recalibrated our business
01:12and structured our business to be able to have a presence in the United States
01:18but we also did a few things differently you know in the energy sector in
01:22Trinidad and Tobago we've been accustomed with foreign companies providing
01:26shared services to local companies. Well we turned, we flipped the coin. PR,
01:32procurement, legal, tax all of that is being done out of pointless Trinidad by
01:38Trinidad citizens but supporting a US business. The private and public sectors
01:42are also being urged to use this time to push our diversification efforts
01:47particularly on the AI, digital and telecommunications fronts. The presence
01:53of Elon Musk in President Trump's administration is very instructive
02:00especially where you look at where Elon Musk has made his fortune not in Tesla
02:06but in telecommunications and President Trump's policy towards
02:11telecommunications and what the investments are going to be in that
02:15area and in neuroscience. These are things we have to look at and as I said
02:19we need to make our jobs redundant because these advanced levels of
02:24technology are going to impact our day-to-day living. Among President Trump's
02:28America first policies is a freeze on several funded agencies and programs
02:33which include international military education and training programs of which
02:38our Defense Force and Police Service are beneficiaries. I think securing the
02:43borders in the region is of interest to the U.S. because we are part of the
02:49major transshipment point for drugs, ammunition and so forth and
02:55leaving the Caribbean susceptible to those types of
03:00ills will also open the U.S. to those types of things. So I think it's a mutually
03:06beneficial initiative to have those training programs. What I think is being
03:12done is just a review and hopefully after the review it will be restarted
03:18probably in a different form.
03:20Renessa Cutting, TV6 News.
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