The government of Lesotho is organizing a delegation to Washington to speak with President Donald Trump as soon as possible regarding the imposition of a 50 percent tariff on its exports, local media confirmed on Friday.
The government’s Lesotho News Agency cited the country’s trade minister, Mokhethi Shelile, who confirmed that the government is organizing a delegation expected to fly to America on April 12. Shelile reportedly made the announcement before the nation’s parliament on Friday, according to Reuters.
“The latest policy direction undertaken by the United States is shocking… [It] has been a very important market for Lesotho,” Shelile declared. He stated that the country had already begun a conversation with American embassy officials in the nation’s capital, Maseru, but hoped for more “high-level” discussions on tariffs in the near future. Prior to the arrival of Lesotho officials to Washington, the trade minister said the country would rapidly try to shift its exports into “alternative markets such as the European Union and the Africa free continental trade area.”
The delegation is being organized following a strange episode in March in which the country invited Trump to visit following his address to a joint session of Congress. Listing various frivolous expenditures by the U.S. government, Trump told Congress that the federal government had spent “$8 million to promote LGBTQ+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of.”
“Lesotho is such a significant and unique country in the whole world. I would be happy to invite the president, as well as the rest of the world to come to Lesotho,” Foreign Affairs Minister Lejone Mpotjoane said at the time.
Lesotho is a mountainous country in southern Africa, completely surrounded by South Africa and governed under a king who has limited political power. It made headlines on Wednesday after President Donald Trump unveiled a massive list of “reciprocal” tariffs on countries that trade with America at an event he branded “Liberation Day.” Trump has promised to reverse trade deficits America has taken on with foreign countries and to dramatically boost domestic manufacturing. To that end, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) calculated new tariffs on countries that export to America by dividing the country’s trade surplus by its total exports to America. The new tariff percentage is half that number.
As Lesotho relies on America to buy much of its production — largely consisting of diamonds and clothing — but does not import many American goods, it was subject to the highest tariff of any nation at 50 percent. Speaking on Friday, Shelile said that Lesotho sends as much as 45 percent of its exports to America. Some reports indicated that exports to America represent as much as ten percent of Lesotho’s GDP. Others, such as a report published on Friday by the left-wing British newspaper the Guardian, claimed that 20 percent of its 2024 exports went to America, including the vast majority of it clothing.
Lesotho’s economy is heavily dependent on its impoverished residents laboring in large factories making jeans and other clothing to import to America. The Guardian described tens of thousands of women supplying American brand-names at outrageously low salaries in jobs “still highly sought” in comparison to Lesotho’s other economic offerings:
There are about 30,000 garment workers in Lesotho, mostly women, with 12,000 making clothes for US brands including Levi’s, Calvin Klein, and Walmart in Chinese- and Taiwanese-owned factories. While most of the jobs pay the monthly minimum wage of $146-$163, they are still highly sought after in the poor, largely informal economy.
Human rights reports by the Department of Labor and State Department indicate that Lesotho has struggled with prevalent child labor and human trafficking.
“Children in Lesotho are subjected to the worst forms of child labor, including in commercial sexual exploitation, sometimes as a result of human trafficking. Children also perform dangerous tasks in animal herding,” the Department of Labor detailed in 2023.
The State Department, in its 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report, accused Lesotho of being fertile ground for the trafficking of orphans.
“In Lesotho, traffickers exploit Basotho children, especially orphans, in forced labor in domestic servitude and animal herding and in sex trafficking,” the State Department narrated. “Young girls employed in domestic work in exchange for room and board are vulnerable to forced labor and abuse. In previous years, there were anecdotal reports that ‘workshop masters’ force children to produce and sell arts and crafts in market vending.”
Only the French territory of Saint Pierre and Miquelon faced a similar 50 percent tariff out of the White House this week, though other nations came close. Madagascar, whose economy relies heavily on vanilla exports, was imposed a 47 percent tariff, while communist Vietnam was imposed a 46 percent tariff. Vietnam has, like Lesotho, already announced a delegation to America to attempt to convince Trump to drop the tariffs.
Economists in the country reacted with panic to the news of a 50 percent tariff. One such economist, Thabo Qhesi, predicted to Reuters that Lestho would simply “be dead” after the tariffs “kill” the clothing industry there.
Much of those imports are the result of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which for years has offered impoverished African nations duty-free importing into the wealthy American market.
“AGOA provides eligible sub-Saharan African countries with duty-free access to the U.S. market for over 1,800 products, in addition to the more than 5,000 products that are eligible for duty-free access under the Generalized System of Preferences program,” the USTR explains. The program is set to expire this year, which Lesotho’s officials had already warned would be detrimental to their economy.
“If AGOA is terminated, it will have an immediate impact on the economy because it could mean the loss of jobs for 30,000 to 40,000 people,” Lesotho King Letsie III told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) in March. “It’s a worrying thing but if it happens, we’ll have to deal with it.”
While still technically in vigor, the tariff imposition effectively eliminates the benefits of AGOA.
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