Since coming to power in January of last year, the Trump administration has focused on two main issues in the Caribbean: bullying the region to submit to its will and strengthening relations with the resource-rich nations which can supply key resources to the US rather than rival nations like China.

Its lurch towards accessing resources like steel, oil, gas, and bauxite from the region was on full display this week during the visit of Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau to Trinidad, where he presided over plans to revive a mothballed steel plant in South Trinidad.

It is like “Lazarus arising from the dead,” said Landau as he and top government officials, executives of Colorado-based Pinnacle Steel, those from Pennsylvania-based Vanadium Corporation and state company Plipdeco assembled to announce the resurrection of the Point Lisas Industrial Estate that would produce tons of industrial strength steel for the local and export market, to the US mainly. The plant has been closed for more than a decade, but the US is now seizing on the chance to revive it through a joint venture state and private sector plan worth $750 million, and with the prospects of employing more than 1,000 mostly local workers.

Landau was in Trinidad on Monday before flying south to Guyana later in the week, where he is expected to also pronounce on a $150 million joint venture US government and private sector project to produce and export bauxite from mines just southwest of the capital, Georgetown.

“I think there is nothing more beautiful, frankly, than being able to see a plant like this that’s been shuttered come back to life... We let a lot of our critical supply chain completely fall out of our hands, so we found that if we need certain minerals or other essentials for life, guess what? We’re dependent on a foreign country that may not have our best interests at heart,” he said, confirming renewed US interests in Guyana, Trinidad, and Jamaica to a lesser extent.

“I have now been in this job about a year and a half and I think this may be the most emotional ceremony that I’ve had the honor and privilege of attending," Landau said. "This is the moment in which you can see words and ideas transformed into action. We’re talking about the strategic imperative of ensuring our critical minerals supply chain, this is exactly what we’re talking about,” Landau noted.

Edwin Bennet, chief executive at Pinnacle Steel and Vanadium Corporation, pitched the initial investment at $250 million to get the plant cleaned up and ready for production by the end of next year.

“And after an expansion in the future, we plan to spend another $500 million and double the number of jobs, so to 1,000,” he added. “Our vision is to produce the equivalent of 50% of American consumption of vanadium — in other words, 100% of the quantity of vanadium that the United States imports. We look at this as a critical asset for Western critical mineral supply chains, putting Trinidad on the map as a key player in the Western reindustrialization and Western creation of critical mineral supply chains outside of China."

Landau is the latest in a string of top US officials who have visited Guyana and Trinidad in recent months even as the two have made no secret of their support for Trump administration policies, including its actions earlier this year to remove and capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

On the other hand, Washington has been pressuring most of the 15-nation bloc to accept non-national deportees it is kicking out of the US. Some of those which resist, like Antigua, have been punished with tourist visa restrictions, a development which Antiguan Prime Minister Gaston Browne has linked directly to resistance to large numbers of non-nationals descending on his federation with Barbuda.