'Only job I know': tiny Lesotho's garment workers reel from Trump's 50% tariffs
Source: The Guardian
‘Only job I know’: tiny Lesotho’s garment workers reel from Trump’s 50% tariffs
Impoverished African country is hit with highest tariff rate, overturning decades of global trade policy
Rachel Savage in Johannesburg and Majirata Latela in Maseru
Fri 4 Apr 2025 13.17 BST
First published on Fri 4 Apr 2025 13.14 BST
The day after Donald Trump announced sweeping global tariffs, Lesotho’s garment workers feared for their jobs.
Last year, Lesotho sent about 20% of its $1.1bn (£845m) of exports to the US, most of it clothing under a continent-wide trade agreement meant to help African countries’ development via tariff-free exports, as well as diamonds.
Now, all that is at risk, after the US president imposed a 50% tariff on the impoverished landlocked country, which he claimed last month “nobody had ever heard of”.
Makhotso Moeti moved to Lesotho’s capital, Maseru, from the rural centre of the tiny mountainous kingdom entirely surrounded by South Africa. “Factory work is the only job I’ve known for many years,” said Moeti, who attaches labels to Gap clothing. “If the factories shut down, I won’t have many options left. I’ll be forced to return home to the very poverty I thought I had escaped when I moved to the city.”
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The tariff rates, which are due to come into force on 9 April, range from 10% to 50% and were calculated with what economists labelled an “idiotic” formula, penalising countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US relative to their imports from the US.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/apr/04/lesotho-garment-workers-reel-trump-tariffs
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