Trump's Tariffs Bring National Disaster for Lesotho

Lesotho declares a national state of disaster over the country's "high rates of youth unemployment and job losses" as uncertainty over US tariffs has hit the landlocked African nation hard. 

When US President Donald Trump announced tariffs on imports for nearly all of his country's trading partners in April, Lesotho was singled out for the highest rate: 50%. 

Needless to say, Lesotho officials were baffled, not least since their country, which Trump disparaged as a nation "nobody has ever heard of", was the poster child of a flagship US programme aimed at helping poor African economies develop through trade. 

Note: Lesotho's textiles sector, its leading export industry, is heavily dependent upon the Africa Growth and Opportunities Act, a US trade initiative that offers qualifying African nations duty-free access to the US market. On the back of that preferential tariff treatment, Lesotho developed a textiles sector that, until now, was the biggest private employer with some 40,000 jobs and accounted for roughly 90% of manufacturing exports, according to Oxford Economics.

Sure, Trump's tariffs have been paused in order to supposedly give trading partners time to negotiate deals with Washington – but for Lesotho, the damage was already done. The simple prospect of a 50% tariff caused many US importers to cancel orders, leading, in turn, to mass sector-wide layoffs. And what orders still exist now bear more risk than reward.

Deputy Prime Minister Nthomeng Majara said the state of disaster would be in force until June 30, 2027. The declaration, in line with the country's Disaster Management Act, allows the state to "take all necessary measures to... minimise the effects of disasters" among others. 

Officials in Lesotho – a country of just over two million people – say the move will allow the government to quickly divert funds to programmes aimed at getting young people into work and helping the economy to recover. 

The textile-dependent economy was already grappling with sky-high unemployment, especially among young people, before Trump raised trade barriers as well as slashing aid, according to an AFP report. 

If you must know, until March, Lesotho was already under an eight-month state of disaster due to severe food insecurity. At the time, Prime Minister Sam Matekane said around 700,000 Basotho were facing extreme hunger, worsened by prolonged drought. 

Against a backdrop of low growth, high unemployment, and widespread poverty, Lesotho’s economy has long struggled. In fact, from a modest peak of 2.6 percent in FY24/25, GDP growth is expected to almost halve to 1.4 percent in FY25/26, reflecting a much more turbulent, if not precarious external environment.

MAGA's Make America Wealthy Again

Yesterday, Donald Trump announced plans for sweeping new import taxes on all goods entering the US, in a watershed moment for global trade. 

Declaring a national emergency, the US president said the US had for more than five decades been "looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike". 

The plan sets a baseline tariff on all imports of at least 10%, with Trump claiming that this will create a hard reset on the country’s industry, eventually leading to a stronger economy and lower prices for US consumers. Items from countries that the White House described as the "worst offenders", including the European Union and China would face higher rates for what Trump said was payback for unfair trade policies. 

Trump's move breaks with decades of American policy embracing free trade, and analysts said it was likely to lead to higher prices in the US and slower growth in the US and around the world. 

The 10% tariffs start on April 05, with the higher duties beginning April 09. 

The White House affirmed the latest changes would not change anything for Mexico and Canada, two of America's closest trading partners. Other allies will also face tariffs, including 10% for the UK and 20% for the European Union. And tariffs on goods from China will jump a further 34%, adding to an existing 20% levy, while it will be 24% for Japan, and 26% on India. [Note: Malaysia's tariff rate is 24%].

Some of the highest rates will be levied on smaller countries, with goods from the southern African nation of Lesotho facing 50%, while Vietnam and Cambodia will be hit with 46% and 49% respectively. The latter two have both seen a rush of investment in recent years, as firms shifted supply chains away from China following Trump's first term. 

The baseline tariffs will apply to more than 100 countries, according to a White House fact sheet, of which some 60 will face a higher "reciprocal" rate. 

Gustavo Flores-Macias, professor of government and public policy at Cornell University, called it a "dramatic transformation" of the international trade order, which the US had helped to create after World War Two. "We're seeing that system unravelling", he said. 

The stock market was closed for trading when Trump made his announcement. But in after-market trading shares in major American companies sank sharply. Apple, which rely heavily on China and on Taiwan, which is facing tariffs of 32%, sank more than 7%. Amazon was down more than 6%, while shares in Walmart dropped more than 4%.

P.S. It's worth pointing out that Trump's tariffs used a simplistic formula to calculate the rate for each of them. The formula’s central value is the trade deficit, the difference between imports and exports between each country and the United States, for the year 2024. Trump has said these tariffs will reduce trade imbalances and level the international playing field. But his one-size-fits-all formula is blunt: It applies the exact same (arbitrary) math to countries whether they have hefty trade barriers or wide-open markets. It considers only the size of a trade deficit, not why the deficit exists. Moreover, the Trump administration calculated the trade deficit using only goods − physical items that can be shipped − and not services, such as technology, media, banking and tourism. (E.g., A DVD counts; a Netflix subscription doesn’t).

Omicron Shows Itself

In my post published November 01, I had highlighted a subvariant of Delta labelled AY.4.2 that has been detected in the UK and a few other countries. The good news is that despite its spread, it is not labelled a “variant of concern”. 

But now, another coronavirus variant has emerged.

It was first reported to the WHO from South Africa on November 24, and has already been identified in Botswana, Belgium, China Hong Kong and Israel. 

On Friday, the WHO declared the variant to be "of concern" and named it Omicron. They said the number of cases of this variant, initially named B.1.1.529, appeared to be increasing in almost all of South Africa's provinces. 

The first known confirmed B.1.1.529 infection had been from a specimen collected on November 09 – and the WHO revealed it would take a couple of weeks to understand the impact of Omicron, as scientists worked to determine how transmissible it was. 

Not a few countries are already getting jittery. The European Union and other major destinations, including the United States and Canada, have moved to block flights from southern African countries – Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe – following the discovery of the said variant. 

Believe me, Covid is just a never-ending story.

I also read news that Merck’s experimental Covid pill has shown lower efficacy in an updated study. 

Following the release of a full analysis of trial results, the pharmaceutical company said on Friday the oral drug, molnupiravir, showed a 30 percent reduction in hospitalizations and deaths when compared with a placebo, based on data from more than 1,400 patients. 

Last month, the company said data from 775 patients had showed that reduction was “approximately” 50 percent. I had reported this in my post that was dated October 03, 2021. 

I don't believe Big Pharma. They are not exactly trustworthy. 

Remember how Pfizer brought out its Covid vaccine “at the speed of science”? Now a whistleblower has told the world that speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety. 

As was reported, Brook Jackson, a regional director employed at the research organization Ventavia Research Group had told The BMJ that the company falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizer’s pivotal Phase III trial. Not to mention that staff who conducted quality control checks were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of problems they were finding. 

Pfizer's data fraud aside, Merck have speedily filed for a US authorization of the oral antiviral Covid treatment on October 11, following the interim data.

[Interestingly, Pfizer are already developing an oral antiviral drug Paxlovid for Covid-19, which requires patients to take three pills twice a day for five days]. 

Ever the follower, Malaysia has put in an order for molnupiravir that is said to force the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus to mutate itself to death. 

I venture a guess that even with our “high” vaccination rates, it is not giving us the results we are anticipating. Our infections are stubbornly clinging on to four digits – yesterday, that number was 5,501 cases and 45 deaths.

200,000 Coronavirus Cases in Africa

The total number of coronavirus cases in Africa passed 200,000 yesterday, according to the World Health Organization’s office for the region. The continent had added 100,000 cases in eighteen days. 

According to the latest update by the UN health agency, 201,157 people have tested positive for the virus across the 54 countries in Africa, of whom 90,374 have recovered and 5,486 have died, the UN health agency said. 

The Top 7 African countries for confirmed cases are still the same as the list I had put out in my May 23 post (“The Covid-19 Situation in Africa”) – just that there has been a reshuffle in their positions, Nos. 3 to 7:

BTW, these seven countries constitute 72.3% of Africa’s total (or 1.9% of cases worldwide). 

Even for fatalities – where the Top 7 countries make up 81.8% of Africa’s total (or 1.1% of deaths worldwide) – it's the same seven countries as I last reported in May – except for a change in positions, Nos. 2 to 7. 

And just to compare with the Bottom 7 (i.e. the Least Affected countries):

Lim Kok Wing Proclaims Himself King of Africa

I don't know about you but Lim Kok Wing on a billboard is already an eyesore. And his latest attempt at self-promotion is sickening because it inflicts raw pain. 

I'm reminded of an insult I once came across and it describes him to a T. “You’re like the sun, not because you light up our world but because it hurts to look at you!"

Proclaiming himself King of Africa is an audacious act of impudent cockiness of the highest order. 

I cannot even begin to fathom where Lim (left)  is coming from, no matter how hard I tried – unless he is portraying himself as the “demi-god savior” of the continent because he offers young Africans tertiary education opportunities in his branch campuses in Lesotho, Botswana, Eswatini and Sierra Leone?! If that is the case, he is guilty of preserving a “negative stereotype of Africans not having access to education. 

I can only conclude Lim’s ego is the boss. This clod earnestly wants us to believe he is larger than life. This cacafuego desperately hopes the public will put him on a pedestal and maybe, even worship and deify him. This coccydynia has sadly, lost his marbles.

Nobody minds if he keeps his derangement to himself – but to make public his self-delusion is distastefully despicable. Besides, nobody gives a shit. 

In fact, somebody correctly initiated a petition “LIM KOK WING UNIVERSITY'S CONDESCENDING BILLBOARD NEEDS TO BE TAKEN DOWN” on Change.org on June 07, 2020, saying that portraying Lim as a “saviour” is condescending and robs African students of their agency to pave their own way in the world. 

“The use of a jungle animal and reference to ‘king’ perpetuates ideas of Africa as one big jungle and adds to the (wrongful) animalistic characterisation of the students. This perpetuates the notion that black people need saving, taking away their power and psychologically placing them in an inferior role”, this person wrote on the petition page. 

Worse, I'm told the photo of Lim being surrounded by Limkokwing University students in Freetown, Sierra Leone had been edited to make the crowd appear larger and more packed than it actually was. 

What a joke! Nothing more than a wretched exaggeration for the mere sake of self-glorifying himself.

Enough said. Suffice to say, my senses are already benumbed.  

I find this whole self-aggrandizing thingy disagreeable, debasing and demeaning.  It not only insults me but worse, it disrespects Africans. God knows what they've done to deserve this! 

As far as I am concerned, the billboard spews a racist message – and we mustn't tolerate it. Not in Malaysia, not anywhere else.

It is sad that Lim consistently sets low expectations for himself and stll fails to achieve them.

The Covid-19 Situation in Africa

More than three months have lapsed since Egypt became the first country in Africa to confirm a coronavirus case. Since then, the outbreak has reached every nation on the continent of 1.2 billion people – with 100,666 confirmed cases and 3,105 deaths on Friday, according to Africa CDC. 

No doubt Africa recorded just a wee fraction of the world's coronavirus cases – a mere 1.9%. 

Also WHO modelling has predicted that Covid-19 would move more slowly through Africa than elsewhere. It's very comforting to know, that’s for sure.

Still, the fact remains that the virus is raging in pockets of the continent. 

And it has been hit hard by the economic fallout from global trade disruptions, falling oil and commodities prices and the lockdowns deployed to fight the disease's spread. That can be just as hurting. 

I read that the presidents of Ivory Coast, Kenya, Niger, Senegal and Sierra Leone on Tuesday are already complaining that wealthy countries are failing Africa, with pledges of financial support and debt relief falling well short of the continent's needs as it battles the coronavirus pandemic. 

But it’s not only Africa that is affected – but everywhere too.

Already, the global economy is shrinking by around 5%. According to World Bank estimates, up to 60 million people could be pushed below the poverty line in their latest apocalyptic prediction. 

World Bank president David Malpass (right) said they have so far loaned money for emergency programs in 100 countries, accounting for about 70% of the world’s population, in response to the coronavirus crisis. 

He said the money would “reinforce healthcare systems” as well as pay for medical equipment and supplies.

Many countries' economies are already in dire straits.

Covid-19 May Never Go Away

The coronavirus "may never go away"! 

WHO emergencies director Dr. Mike Ryan (left) on Wednesday cautioned against trying to predict when the virus would disappear. 

He said even if a vaccine is found, controlling the virus will require a "massive effort". 

He noted that there are other diseases, such as measles, that still haven't been eliminated despite their being vaccines for them. And Covid-19 may become embedded in populations in the same way that HIV has.

WHO epidemiologist Dr. Maria van Kerkhove (left) added: "We need to get into the mindset that it is going to take some time to come out of this pandemic".

Yesterday, Russia registered 10,028 coronavirus infections, the tenth consecutive day that number has been above 10,000 cases. 

With the tally at 242,271, the country is a virus hotspot – the third highest in the world after the US and Spain.

On Wednesday too, Malaysia’s next door neighbour is not faring too well. The number of Covid-19 cases in Singapore has exceeded 25,000; the only consolation is that the death toll remains low.

The last country in Africa left unaffected by the coronavirus pandemic, Lesotho, announced its first case, AFP reported. The patient is a Lesotho national studying in Saudi Arabia who had only just returned to the country. 

Meanwhile, Canada’s death toll surpassed 5,000.

And on Tuesday, both Romania and Indonesia saw their fatalities surged past 1,000.