Maputo, 3 Apr (AIM) – US President Donald Trump on Wednesday imposed a general 16 per cent tariff on imports from Mozambique.
The the baseline tariff charged by Trump is 10 per cent: all nations will be subjected to a tariff of at least ten per cent, but there will be much higher tariffs against countries that Trump wants, for whatever reason, to punish.
On the list published by Trump, among the countries hit by the highest tariffs are Cambodia (49 per cent), Laos (48 per cent),Vietnam (46 per cent), Sri Lanka (44 per cent), Myanmar (44 per cent), Syria (41 per cent), Iraq (39 per cent), Guyana (38 per cent), Bangladesh (37 per cent), Thailand (36 per cent), Bosnia (35 per cent), China (34 per cent), Switzerland (31 per cent).
But the highest tariff of all, 50 per cent, is reserved for the small, landlocked nation of Lesotho.
The tariffs Trump has imposed on other members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) are as follows: Madagascar (47 per cent), Mauritius (40 per cent), Botswana (37 per cent), Angola (32 per cent), South Africa (30 per cent), Namibia (21 per cent), Zimbabwe (18 per cent), Zambia (17 per cent), Malawi (17 per cent), Mozambique (16 per cent) and Democratic Republic of Congo (11 per cent). Three other SADC members (Tanzania, Eswatini, and Comoros) are charged the baseline 10 per cent tariff. Inexplicably, one SADC member, Seychelles, is not on the list.
Trump made no attempt to explain the different level of tariffs – why, for example, should Lesotho pay tariffs that are five times more than Tanzania?
Not subject to the new tariffs are the dictatorships in Russia, Belarus and North Korea – but the victim of Russian aggression, Ukraine, is hit with the ten per cent tariff. The only excuse suggested for this is that Russia and North Korea are already under international sanctions.
Although the US has talked about “reciprocal” tariffs, in reality there is nothing reciprocal about the new tariffs. What the Trump administration appears to have done is divide the trade deficit of the target country with the US, and then divide that figure by the value of exports to the US. This does not result in ten per cent, and so the figures for many states (including Mozambique) are fudged.
The African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA), passed by the US Congress in 2000, grants eligible sub-Saharan African countries (including Mozambique) tariff and duty free access to the US market. Trump has not yet tried to dismantle AGOA.
Under AGOA’s provisions, Mozambican textile products can enter the US free of duty or tariffs, until September 2025, when AGOA could be renewed.
The list of countries facing tariffs contain several absurdities. For instance, the Falkland Islands are hit with a tariff of 41 per cent. But the Falklands are not an independent country, but are run by the United Kingdom (and claimed by Argentina).
Even more absurd is the 10 per cent tariff on the sub-Antarctic Heard and Macdonald Islands. These islands do not export anything to the United States, because nobody lives there!
Other tiny nations and territories were also hit with 10 per cent tariffs, including Tokelau, a dependent territory of New Zealand, with a population of around 1,600 people, and the Cocos Islands, a territory owned by Australia, with a population of around 600 people.
(AIM)
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