For a country he recently said “no one has ever heard”, President Donald Trump singled out Lesoto in South Africa for a very harsh treatment on his long list of “reciprocal” tariffs.
The 2.3 million “mountainous kingdom”, which is completely surrounded by South Africa, was one of the countries, some of the poorest in the world, to be selected for the most punitive US tariffs.
Others included Nauru, the third smallest place in the world and Myanmar, who is facing the devastating consequences of the big earthquake last month, but exports to the US will now hold a 45 percent fee.
Saint Pierre and Friendly, France’s external self-governing territory in the Northwestern Atlantic Ocean, whose main export has been processed crust, also made the list. The French territory was planned for 50 percent fees in the White House press release, although it was among some territories not mentioned in the executive order.
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Lesoto, known as the “denim capital of Africa”, has built a vibrant textile industry on the non -tariff access to the Act of African Growth and Opportunities (Agoa), which was introduced in 2000 to catalyze development in poor countries.
Lesoto had a $ 235 million trading surplus with SH.BA in 2024, according to the United States trade representative, with brands such as Levi, Wrangler, Footlocker and Timberland that make up most of those exports. Everyone will now hold a 50 percent fee.
Mokhethi Shelile, Lesoto’s Minister of Trade, would make an urgent speech in Parliament on the issue on Thursday afternoon.
Thabo laughed, the head of the country’s main business room, said that his phone had not stopped ringing since the tariff announcements began. “Trade union workers, business people, transport employees – everyone is in panic,” he said. “This 50 percent fee means that we can lose the entire textile industry.”
Textiles hired 30,000 people directly, said laughing, with many thousands of indirect work in transport, food, retail and property. “People have asked what they can do (to mitigate) the impact. But as you can see the US president is completely unpredictable,” he said, adding that the government would send a delegation to Washington to announce its concerns.
Just last month, in his first speech before the Congress, Trump referred to Lesoto, apparently for the first time, saying he will cut $ 8 million in aid to “promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesoto, which no one has ever heard”.
Many African countries that are significantly relying on Agoa assume that it will not survive the tariff barrage. “Agoa is over. He is dead in the water,” Alex Owino, an economist in Nairobi, told Confidential Africa.
Among other countries that are considered to have waged “unstable economic war” against the US-free TRUMA for “reciprocal” fees-are the British islands, a British dependency that sends molluscs and non-frozen fillets in America in quantity to attract a 41 percent fee.
Falklands exported $ 27.4 million to the US in 2023, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, but only imported items worth $ 329,000, one third of which was calculated by a single part of the broadcast equipment.
The island of the Nauru Pacific Ocean, whose economy has fought since the rapid impoverishment of its fossilized bird deposits – a natural phosphate known as Guano, which was once its main export – is also on the list, despite exporting only 1.16 million dollars of goods to SHBA in 2023.
Exports to the US by Nauru, formerly known as the island of Pleasant, will now hold a 30 percent fee. The city of Vatican and Monaco, the only two places smaller than Nauru, both escaped at the initial 10 percent tariff.
“I’ve never seen anyone count fees in this way,” said Ha-Joon Chang, an economist in Soas in London, referring to what he called the “strange” formula that arrived at fees based on the trade deficit of each country in 2024 with SH.BA
He argued that the simple dislike was the real justification for hitting a country like South Africa, which has repeatedly attracted Trump’s anger and Elon Musk-the cost of the President of the President of South Africa-with a 30 percent fee. “They hate South Africa. Just don’t try to pretend you have an economic logic after that,” Chang said.
Officials in South Africa fear that the 30 percent tariff could destroy the car’s and citrus fruits industry. This can destroy thousands of high -pay in a country with alarming unemployment levels.
Another African country in Trump’s chairs is Madagascar, one of the poorest nations in the world with a $ 506 GDP per capita, according to the World Bank.
The island is the world’s leading exporter of vanilla, a crop that must be manually pollen and grows well in tropical countries. Madagascar exported $ 143m vanilla to the US in 2023, according to the OEC, the second largest article behind Nickel.
Chang, SOAS’s economist, said he suspected whether the US was aiming to create a vanilla industry of its own given the need for extremely free work and the inappropriate climate of America. “I really don’t get it. There are many strange things here.”
