Trinidadian disrespect and Jamaican mismanagement

Aubyn Hill, financial Gleaner Columnist

For some persons, 13 is a bad number. For hard-nosed realists, it is just a number.

Trinidadians are finding out that treating 13 Jamaicans with palpable disrespect will turn 13 into a bad number for their exports which generate that whopping trade imbalance they have with Jamaica.

The trade numbers with Trinidad and Tobago are quite stark. We, quite stupidly, have borrowed hard currency to finance this perpetual trade deficit with people who abuse our citizens.

In the process, we have made our debt-to-GDP ratio lopsidedly negative to provide jobs for Trinidadians who are so distastefully disrespectful to us as Jamaicans.

According to Statin, for every single one of the 13 years since 2000, Jamaica recorded huge trade deficits with the twin-island republic.

In 2000, Jamaica imported US$322.95 million and exported US$21.72 million to rack up a negative trade balance of US$301.23 million. The trade deficit kept climbing to $465.06 million in 2004, then to $879.07 million in 2007, and to a high of US$1.45 billion in 2008 from a total import bill of $1.52 billion.

The trade gap was still a whopping negative US$683.94 million in 2012. And it is heading in the same direction in 2013.

Based on my home training and business experience, I would treat persons and their distant relatives and friends who spend that kind of money with me annually, for such a long time, with great respect.

The only time a spender can be treated with the kind of revolting disrespect of the kind the Trinidadian immigration officers, 'sellers', handed out to our fellow Jamaican citizens on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, is when the sellers in Trinidad see us Jamaican importers as well below them as persons, or even as sub-humans.

They disregarded the terms of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas and the recent Caribbean Court of Justice ruling on the Shanique Myrie body-cavity-search case created in that other Caribbean bastion of disrespect for Jamaicans, Barbados.

JAMAICANS ARE INCENSED

The Jamaican populace is running well ahead of the sometimes pusillanimous government officials who have been handling our affairs with Trinidad.

There is no doubt that a properly functioning CARICOM can benefit all its members if all members take the long view. Taking the short-term view, many have caused Jamaicans living in the 1950s and 1960s to fret that we may have to become supports of 'those small island folks' - and Trinidad and Tobago were included in that group - if we joined as one community.

Today, it is that same short-termism that may be blinding some Trinidadian leaders and their immigration officers because of the economic buoyancy provided by their oil and gas industry.

But the benefits of that natural largesse can change quite fast and economic circumstances can be switched again quite quickly.

Trinidadians should keep a keen eye on the oil industry in America, and extend a gracious spirit to its neighbours, given the fracking of shale to produce self-sufficiency in oil in the United States, and the almost endless supply of natural gas in that country - Trinidad's overwhelmingly large purchaser of its petroleum products.

Trinidad should consider and take to heart that Jamaicans will not always be bereft of clear-eyed and robust political and economic leadership, and it should be wise enough to know that economic places can change in short generations.

Led by a straightforward rural teacher, Kesreen Green Dillon, Jamaicans have taken to Facebook and other social media, as well as traditional newspapers, radio and television, to voice their very strong opinions on the actions of the Trinidadians at Piarco airport last week.

Jamaican resentment is climbing to reach Trinidadian antipathy and disrespect.

Not the JMA - its current president has taken a conciliatory stance - and certainly not the government, which is somewhat understandable, but the Jamaican people, and consumers of Trinidadian products in particular, have decided en masse to boycott Trinidadian-made products.

There is a murmur in some boardrooms about the disgusting treatment handed out by these Trinidadian immigration officers to Jamaicans. It is said that the owners of a major retailing outfit turned back truckloads of consumer products from their business places because they were made in Trinidad.

It is a real pity that the Trinidadian immigration officers were not a bit more sensitive and humane - and better schooled in abiding by the tenets of the CARICOM rules signed by their country in a formal treaty in their own town of Chaguaramas.

Jamaicans' patience has run out; their anger has boiled over and is being transformed into meaningful action.

No one of sound mind wants an all-out trade war, and it can still be averted. However, Jamaicans have had enough of being lectured that Trinidad and Tobago is not an ATM for poor people, or even that our southern CARICOM 'partner' will offer help to hurricane victims only if it decides that it will benefit from the giving.

FRENCH REMEDY

In the 1980s, France was suffering from the relentless onslaught of Japanese exports. Despite numerous requests and increasingly firm entreaties to the Japanese to arrive at an agreement to even out the lopsided trade arrangement that was so in favour of the Japanese, the mighty Asian exporter refused to budge.

France devised its own remedy. It was quite

ingenious. It informed Japan that because it was such a special trading partner, it would have its own special entry port in France. The special port turned out to be hundreds of kilometres inland, served by a very small country road.

When the Japanese electronic and other goods began to pile up at seaports because of unavailable customs officers and an unreachable 'port', the Japanese got the message and adjusted their policies and behaviour pretty swiftly.

What Henry Kissinger termed 'enlightened self-interest' was practised by France and caught quickly by the Japanese.

In all this, there is a not-so-subtle message from the Trinidadians and Barbadians. It is this: You Jamaicans have mismanaged your economy, and in the process, have produced a poverty-stricken populace. These poor and ill-behaved Jamaicans come to our countries and break our labour and other laws.

In the case of Trinidadians, they contend our law-breaking criminals kill their citizens when they come to Jamaica.

We need to say, we will keep our poverty-stricken business until you learn to respect us as law-abiding visitors, unless we break the laws of your country or if we have a criminal record.

Do we have to wait for more of our women to be cavity-searched, or forced to sleep on airport floors before we act? Or will it require some of our senior male officials to be given the treatment before we move from gentle, fearful entreating to action?

Jamaican consumers are sending a clear message to our Trinidadian neighbours, and to our local political and business leaders, as well.

Jamaican enlightened self-interest needs to be put into action and see us buying a lot more Jamaican products!

Aubyn Hill is the CEO of Corporate Strategies Limited and was an international banker for more than 25 years. Email: writerhill@gmail.com Twitter: @HillAubynFacebook: facebook.com/Corporate.Strategies