—President Ali says gov’t engaged in ‘good’ discussions, as North American nation remains a strong partner

GUYANESE officials, later this week, will meet with domestic exporters to further discuss the impacts of the recent reciprocal tariffs imposed by the United States (US) on Guyana and other nations, President, Dr. Irfaan Ali has said.
While responding to questions from the local media on the sidelines of an event on Tuesday, the Head of State noted that Guyana remains engaged with its US counterparts on the matter.
He said: “The US is a strong partner of Guyana, and we have a lot of discussions and conversations that are ongoing… there are some good discussions going on.

“I have asked the Minister of Finance, and the Vice President too will be meeting with our exporters before the end of this week to have a sense from them of the impact of the current circumstances.”
Just last week, Guyana’s Vice-President, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo advised exporters not to panic as the Guyana government plans to engage the US.
Jagdeo noted that the announcement does not come as a surprise since President Trump had spoken extensively about trade during his election campaign, highlighting how he planned to use it as a vehicle to rebalance trade between his country and the rest of the world.

“So, President Trump’s announcement yesterday did not come as a surprise to us here in Guyana. This was anticipated,” he said.
The VP then delved into the government’s current understanding of President Trump’s tariff plans.
President Trump imposed a 10 per cent tariff on all countries but he also announced individualised reciprocal tariffs that are higher for over 50 countries, including Guyana. Jagdeo then proposed the calculation that he believes the US used to arrive at that figure.

He said: “From what we looked at, all we have read, it seems as though all of the countries that have had higher reciprocal tariffs are countries that have been exporting more into the United States of America than they are importing from the United States of America. That is, countries that have a trade surplus with the United States of America. It seems as though that is the basis for higher reciprocal tariff not individualised tariff barriers in each country.”
He then pointed to some statistics from the United Nations (UN) global trade platform, Comtrade data, which indicated that, for 2024, Guyana exported US$3.3 billion to the US and imported US$2.56 billion, so there was a trade surplus.

However, the US reported that the exports from Guyana into that country totalled US$5.5 billion while the imports amounted to US$1.3 billion. According to their figures, there was a trade surplus of $4.1 billion.
Jagdeo told members of the media that the Trump administration might have derived the 38 per cent figure based on the aforementioned figures.
However, Jagdeo contended that the rate might drop if the trade surplus statistics drop and if the facts are made clear and both parties can reconcile the trade figures.