The editors at the Guardian newspaper in Trinidad and Tobago just don't get it - or are pretending not to. So, they cling to a stale and outmoded economic nationalism, seemingly blissful in their ignorance to the shifts in the global economy, or an appreciation of the obligations of countries which choose to join with others to create a single market and a seamless economic space. Their unenlightenment was on display again this past weekend when they stood by what was essentially a piece of jingoism and economic myopia over Port of Spain's failure to fulfil an agreement to supply Kingston with LNG for an energy conversion project here.

That arrangement for 1.1 million tonnes of LNG a year or about five per cent of Trinidad and Tobago's annual production of natural gas, was critical to a US$1.6 billion expansion by Alcoa of its alumina refinery here, in which the Jamaican government is a significant shareholder. Jamaica had insisted that, within the spirit and the laws of the Caricom single market agreement, that it be supplied LNG at the price Trinidadians pay for natural gas, plus the cost of liquefaction and transportation. Both sides agreed to disagree on this point, but the Trinidadian Prime Minister, Patrick Manning, gave a solemn pledge that the gas would be supplied, if not at the domestic rate, at a negotiated price.

Now, the Trinidadians say they have no LNG to supply to Jamaica and don't know when they will. That places the Alcoa project in jeopardy and does potential harm to Jamaica's economic growth and development. It was Port of Spain's failure to be sensitive to this issue for a country with which it enjoys a US$500 million trade surplus about which this newspaper complained.

How did the Guardian respond? First, by ascribing our arguments to the Jamaican government and to accuse Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, in the face of a general election, of attempting to divert attention from corruption and criminality in Jamaica and to claim it was the wont of the Jamaican administrations to do such things. The Guardian tried to paint Trinidad as victim. The paper, however, in commending its editorial to the Jamaican public, chose to leave that bit of nastiness out of its excerpt.

But there was an egregious economic fallacy that is worse than the bit of political disingenuity. That is, the paper's attempt to posit a supply of LNG to Jamaica to allow cheaper energy to its national power grid as a specific subsidy to Alcoa, rather than attempt to build greater cost efficiency in the national economy. It is as if the Guardian presumes that when Trinidad and Tobago supplies energy for national economic output, there is a price differentiation between foreign and domestically-ownedfirms. The global environment is hardly permissive to such price discrimination that harks back to a projectionist and socialist past.

But to have landed its putrid venom on the Jamaican government, which, incidentally, has been at the forefront of promoting regional integration - sometimes in the face of domestic hostility - the Guardian relents somewhat by talking about vertical integration of regional production processes.

It seems to assume, however, that this can only happen in the context of an over-arching state, which given the paper's ownership, is quite surprising. But then, glibness was never any substitute for thought.