Trump's highest tariff will kill tiny African kingdom of Lesotho, economist says

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u/BlueDevilVoon John Brown 2d ago

Between USAID shuttering, HIV/AIDS funding and tariffs like this the admin is doing almost everything they can to increase death and suffering for Africans. Unless you’re a white South African.

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u/admiraltarkin NATO 2d ago

And if you're a white South African you can get an expedited status to come here!

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/30/us/politics/trump-south-africa-white-afrikaners-refugee.html

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u/greenskinmarch Henry George 2d ago

But both South Africa (30% Trump tariff) and Lesotho (50% Trump tariff) are in the Southern African Customs Union, a 0 tariff free trade area which includes Namibia (21% Trump tariff).

So South African and Lesotho exporters can easily reduce their tariffs by creating a shell company in Namibia and selling everything to the US through that.

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u/EMPwarriorn00b European Union 2d ago edited 1d ago

Don't expect Trump to know about any free trade areas except for the USMCA and the EU.

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u/Erdkarte 2d ago

Based on his actions, I'd be surprised he'd even know what the USMCA was

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u/t_scribblemonger 2d ago

Or the EU

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u/greenskinmarch Henry George 2d ago

¿Estados Unidos?

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u/Sylvanussr Janet Yellen 2d ago

Hmmm sounds like some foreign Mexican country. Untrustworthy. Tariff them.

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u/sumduud14 Milton Friedman 1d ago

Done. The United States has just unilaterally imposed massive sanctions on the Estados Unidos: any imports into the Estados Unidos will be subject to destructively high tariffs, destroying their economy and driving them into a recession.

That'll show them!

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u/JakeArrietaGrande Frederick Douglass 2d ago

Funny story, in his first administration, trump was meeting with Angela Merkel, and kept pestering her about a trade deal with Germany. She kept trying to explain to him she couldn't deal with the US directly, and that she couldn't and wouldn't make a deal outside of the EU. But he just never seemed to get the concept

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u/MayorofTromaville YIMBY 1d ago

Between that anecdote and Trump throwing Starbursts at her and then saying "don't say I don't give you anything," it is genuinely horrifying how much of an idiot he is when it comes to the EU.

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u/martphon 2d ago

United States Marine Corps of America, duh.

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u/dutch_connection_uk Friedrich Hayek 2d ago

Namibia's project to become the Singapore of SSA just got new life I guess.

Hell the USA is basically paying you to move your logistics there rather than keep it in the Western Cape.

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u/ShouldersofGiants100 NATO 2d ago

The fact Trump bought into the literally started by Nazis claim of "White Genocide in South Africa" and it has barely even registered in the media is a testament to how absolutely fucking insane this presidency has been.

The history of that whole "movement" is wild, being deliberately astroturfed to look like a genuine grassroots movement during the Tea Party era as a way of getting "Great Replacement" rhetoric into the Republican mainstream. And of course, Trump fell for it hard, because he's a fucking moron.

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u/dutch_connection_uk Friedrich Hayek 2d ago

The tea party was so insane that it was the moment I realized that I'm in fact a partisan democrat, for all my misgivings about the left.

I guess I should be clear that it wasn't the tea party itself that was the problem. It was that Republican elected officials bent the knee to it and increasingly became part of it.

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u/RIOTS_R_US NATO 2d ago

That's exactly how I've felt over time, as someone who was a bit young for the tea party but not for Trump. You would need me to live through the gap between Andrew Johnson and FDR and the same depth of ideology shifts to ever feel comfortable voting for a Republican again. There would have to be no one alive today who is still part of the party.

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u/Opje-45 Robert Nozick 1d ago

Our pals over at ShitLiberalsSay believe that the USAID is an imperialist institution. The far left and right both have a lot of things in common, especially in terms of supporting policies that adversely affect the global poor.

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u/Leo_York YIMBY 1d ago

I've heard lefties make the argument that aid/humanitarian programs by Western countries are neocolonialism which is certainly...a take.

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u/St_Patrice 1d ago

More social instability and Islamic extremism? That sucks but at least my 401(k) isn't woke

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u/DR320 Ben Bernanke 1d ago

Africans are about to be fluent in Mandarin

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u/StrainFront5182 2d ago

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u/Maximilianne John Rawls 2d ago

does elon hate lesotho ?

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u/Darkdragon3110525 Bisexual Pride 2d ago

black country

Yes

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u/ShouldersofGiants100 NATO 2d ago

Black country that granted asylum to opponents of Apartheid. I don't think hatred is remotely enough to encompass Elon's feelings.

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u/ancientestKnollys 2d ago

On the one hand, Elon's Dad was an anti-apartheid politician. On the other hand, Elon hates his Dad.

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u/SenranHaruka 1d ago

I don't think there's enough evidence to prove Elon is an Apartheidist. I do however think there's enough evidence to show he's a massive cultural chauvinist and believes meritocracy will sort out people from inferior cultures/civilizations from power, thus unless they fully embrace European civilizational markers, black self rule represents a sort of Idiocracy, where the unintelligent masses use democracy to claim legitimacy for an unfit ruler, as evidenced by continued poverty of those states.

The line between "different genetic races" and "different cultural civilizations" is weak in practice and you could argue is just an attempt to redo the former idea of racializing developmental science without the stink of discredited eugenics and with the veneer of the current vogue developmental science: institutions.

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u/TeddysBigStick NATO 1d ago

On the other hand, he believes that the Jews push hatred about White people.

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u/Dense_Delay_4958 Malala Yousafzai 2d ago

But why is Lesotho singled out?

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u/mythoswyrm r/place '22: Neoliberal Battalion 2d ago

Artifact of the insane way the tariffs were calculated. Lesotho is too poor to import much from the USA, which means the relative deficit is large and thus is needs higher tariffs to balance the trade. Same reason why places like Vietnam and Indonesia got hit hard (except Lesotho is a lot poorer).

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u/PM_ME_UR_STEAM_KEYS_ Commonwealth 2d ago

These tariffs will undoubtedly bring many jobs back to the US. Finally American workers will get an opportunity to manufacture Levi jeans and mine America’s rich and existent diamond veins.

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u/sgthombre NATO 2d ago

It's one of the two enclaves carved out of South Africa so of course he hates it.

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u/hypsignathus Emma Lazarus 2d ago

I’ve spent some time in some very poor areas of many countries facing high Trump tariffs, including Lesotho. These are people who live in mud brick huts. I am so hopping mad.

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u/nekoliberal WTO 2d ago

I was lesotho in my first Model UN this makes me very sad :(

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u/Infinite_Fall6284 2d ago

Aw that's adorable

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u/omnipotentsandwich Amartya Sen 1d ago

Wait, people actually do that Model UN stuff?

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u/Astralesean 1d ago

You didn't have an adolescence if you didn't do that.

Bonus points if the team that had to represent the US larped being stereotypically arrogant pricks to get laughs

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u/Iamreason John Ikenberry 1d ago

I did it in college. It was super fun.

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u/nekoliberal WTO 1d ago

yeah, in fact in my high school the MUN club was bigger and more prestigious than the debate club 😤😤😤😤

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u/The_Amish_FBI 2d ago

Trump doesn't even know how to spell "Lesotho", let alone know what it is.

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u/Fish_Totem NATO 2d ago

Yeah that’s literally his quote from the not-SOTU. He namedrops them as a country that “no one has ever heard of before.” Which of course is true from the perspective of most of his base.

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u/Dense_Delay_4958 Malala Yousafzai 2d ago

It was like when Hegseth didn't know what ASEAN was and MAGAs acted like it was some obscure piece of trivia

If they don't know it, nobody does

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u/Wolf6120 Constitutional Liberarchism 1d ago edited 1d ago

Worse still, if they don't know it then the actual people it impacts don't exist/matter either.

Like "Nobody even knows where the Hell Lesotho is” as a policy justification is already deeply insulting enough to all the people in the US who DO know where it is, of course, but it's infinitely more vile to the actual people of Lesotho whose well-being and even their very existence is treated like an irritating little afterthought.

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u/SenranHaruka 1d ago

the old Bush era meme that americans are geographically stunted needs to come back.

4

u/St_Patrice 1d ago

Meme? It's reality

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u/savuporo Gerard K. O'Neill 2d ago

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u/LivefromPhoenix NYT undecided voter 2d ago

Probably shouldn't share this one if you want MAGA to abandon tariffs.

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u/googledebunkers100 2d ago

MAGA would be willing to die if they knew people they disliked would die twice as hard

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u/lockjacket United Nations 2d ago

The pure cruelty of protectionism is insane.

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u/SucculentMoisture Ellen Johnson Sirleaf 2d ago

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u/cscareerkweshuns 2d ago

MAGA will celebrate this news for sure.

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u/rjrgjj 2d ago

I’m waiting to hear why we hate Lesotho.

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u/ale_93113 United Nations 2d ago

Black and poor?

3

u/Embarrassed-Unit881 1d ago edited 1d ago

"If they die without us why don't they just become our territory"

Which like how the fuck do you even reply to that

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u/jokul 1d ago

They have no choice but to agree with everything Benny Johnson says.

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u/ihatethesidebar Zhao Ziyang 2d ago

I like that the article quotes a random corn vendor.

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u/deepad9 Mario Vargas Llosa 1d ago

When can we start calling Trump a literal genocidaire?

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u/BigDaddyCoolDeisel 2d ago

Can we ever come back from this? Like... i don't see how we ever return to our glory.

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u/Tormenator1 Thurgood Marshall 1d ago

Eh,we can come back from this in 50-60 years, but that's contingent on utterly crushing the Republican party as a political entity.

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u/BigDaddyCoolDeisel 1d ago

Good point

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u/SenranHaruka 1d ago

No not really. the rest of the world is finally understanding what South America always has understood. Ask yourself if you see them liking us anytime soon and there's your answer.

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u/Nihlus11 NATO 1d ago

South America was very pro-US as recently as 2024.

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u/HaXxorIzed Paul Volcker 1d ago

Let us be honest here. The second the average Trump supporter read "African", their opinion of this outcome changed from "feature" to "We should have done it even faster".

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/LivinAWestLife YIMBY 2d ago

They’re a constitutional monarchy. Eswatini is the one that sucks.

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u/KeithClossOfficial Bill Gates 2d ago

Eswatini has had two leaders since 1899.. if you want an idea of how crazy their style of government is

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u/The-Metric-Fan NATO 2d ago

The ability of Trumpers to project whatever desired ideology or motives onto Trump's actions they wish is truly remarkable and should be studied in a lab

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u/Pristine-Aspect-3086 John Rawls 2d ago

yeah that's why trump is doing this

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u/VaccineMachine 2d ago

So surely you're also cheering on the death of The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, etc, then right?

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u/The-Metric-Fan NATO 2d ago

He will once Trump says to do so

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u/RyuTheGuy Mackenzie Scott 2d ago

Says the dude with a commonwealth flair lmao

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u/Top_Lime1820 Daron Acemoglu 2d ago

Lol. Lmao even.

News (Africa) Trump's highest tariff will kill tiny African kingdom of Lesotho, economist says

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