President Trump said the rest of the world is cheating on the United States. He said he is imposing tariffs on imports from other countries, and the biggest tariffs will be the worst cheaters.
Trump's highest cheat chart? Well, it turns out that this is the Kingdom of South Africa in Lesotho.
In 2023, Lesotho exported about $228 million in goods and services to the United States and imported $7.33 million in goods and services from the United States. To correct this imbalance, the Trump administration sees it as an unbearable abuse of the American people, and the president is imposing a 50% tax on future imports in Lesotho, the highest tax rate in any country.
It is a decision that illustrates the stupidity and cruelty of Trump's new trade policy, even compared to its established purpose.
Lesotho is one of the poorest countries on the planet. The reason why 2.3 million citizens spend an average of $3 on U.S. goods and services each year is not because they try to deceive the United States, but because they have very little money.
What are the things Americans buy from Lesotho? Diamonds rank first. We can improve the trade balance with Lesotho with fewer diamonds, but we can’t dig our own diamonds. There are no commercial diamond mines in this country.
Of course, Lesotho is an extreme example. But this is a very valuable one. It emphasizes that the president lies to the American people.
Trump repeatedly said on Wednesday that tariffs are “reciprocity”, but that's not the case. The tariff rates announced by the Trump administration have nothing to do with the tariff rates charged by other countries. They are calculated based on childish formulas for trade imbalances.
The White House later said imbalance was a measure of all the ways other countries deceived the United States. But as Lesotho illustrates, imbalance is a bad measuring rod. Other countries engage in unfair trade practices. So are we! Rather than engaging in identifying and targeting these issues, the Trump administration decided to blow up the global economy.
The president apologized to F. Scott Fitzgerald, a careless man who smashed things, creatures, and eventually left others to clean up the chaos he caused.
