We have not­ed pre­vi­ous­ly that con­tin­u­ous fis­cal deficits fu­el the de­mand for for­eign ex­change (forex), there­by de­plet­ing T&T’s for­eign ex­change re­serves. The new ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ini­tial com­ments sug­gest that there is lit­tle ap­petite for spend­ing cuts on the scale re­quired to lim­it the fis­cal deficit and no ap­petite for tax in­creas­es. The prime min­is­ter’s scathing re­but­tal of the prop­er­ty tax demon­strates this in­tent.

T&T is a small coun­try with a cor­re­spond­ing­ly small pop­u­la­tion and can­not be self-suf­fi­cient. It must trade with the rest of the world to buy what cit­i­zens re­quire to sur­vive.

Im­port­ed prod­ucts are ubiq­ui­tous as we im­port every­thing: food, fu­el, cars, trucks, spare parts, fer­tilis­er, pa­per, pens, soft­ware, in­ter­net ser­vices, tele­vi­sions, movies, ca­ble of­fer­ings, and even for­eign per­form­ers. The coun­try ob­tains forex to pay for these im­ports by ex­port­ing.