When the Sky Falls: Lesotho Says US Tariffs Will ‘Kill’ the Country
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When the Sky Falls: Lesotho Says US Tariffs Will ‘Kill’ the Country
LESOTHO
When US President Donald Trump mentioned Lesotho in his speech to Congress in early March, he referred to the small, mountainous kingdom in southern Africa as “the country that no one ever heard of.”
The audience laughed.
Lesothans, however, were baffled that the president of the world’s most powerful country would “insult” them so during such an important speech.
A month later, however, Lesothans are truly bewildered – the tiny country of 2.3 million, one of the poorest in the world, was hit with 50 percent US tariffs, the highest rate in the world.
It set off panic in the country.
“This has been a devastating day for us,” Teboho Kobeli, founder of Lesotho clothes manufacturer Afri-Expo Textiles, which employs 2,000 people, told the BBC after the announcement of the tariffs. The US is so significant that “we can’t just shelve the US market … we need to do everything we can to bring (it) back,” he added.
On Wednesday, President Trump paused most tariffs for 90 days but it is still unclear whether Lesotho or other countries will face these hikes, or what the rates will be.
Lesotho, known as the “kingdom in the sky” because it has the world’s highest base altitude of any country, has a gross domestic product of around $2 billion. About one-fifth of Lesothans are unemployed. And at least one-third exist on less than $2 a day.
As a result, the country is heavily dependent on its textile sector, known for producing apparel for brands such as Levi’s, The Gap, and Walmart, and which employs about 40,000 workers. It is Lesotho’s biggest private employer and accounts for about 90 percent of manufacturing employment and exports.
The tariff “is going to kill the textile and apparel sector in Lesotho,” Thabo Qhesi, a Lesotho-based economic analyst, told Reuters. “Then you have (the shopkeepers) who are selling food (to the textile workers). And then you have residential property owners who are renting houses for the workers. So this means if the closure of factories were to happen … there will be multiplier effects.”
As a result, he added, “Lesotho will be dead.”
The reciprocal tariffs were targeting “countries that treat us badly,” Trump said, earlier this month, adding that the US had been taken advantage of by “cheaters” and had been “pillaged” by foreigners.
The tariffs hit dozens of countries around the world, but most incurred lower rates. They were set by a formula that has confounded analysts, with countries such as Kenya, far richer than Lesotho, seeing rates of with 10 percent.
As a result of the formula for the tariff, which calculates the US trade deficit in goods with a particular country then divides it by the amount of goods imported into the US from that country essentially means that countries which import only small quantities of American goods, such as Lesotho, Madagascar or the Falkland Islands, have been hit with higher tariffs than much richer countries.
“Only the formula could also ignore … (that the) Basotho, (the people of Lesotho), produce a lot of Levi’s jeans, but very few can afford a first-hand pair especially after a decade of falling real GDP per capita,” wrote the Financial Times.
Lesotho’s exports to the United States, which in 2024 totaled $237 million, account for about 10 percent of its GDP.
Also, the new tariffs on African countries signaled the end for the African Growth and Opportunity Act set up by the US Congress two decades ago to help African economies develop through preferential access to US markets, which had led to the development of the textile industry in Lesotho in the first place, the newspaper added. The tariffs Lesotho sets on goods protected the textile industry.
The tariffs violate the spirit of the act, say analysts, which expires in September unless it is renewed by Congress.
Meanwhile, Lesotho is also struggling with the recent cuts to the US Agency for International Development programs, which essentially paid for Lesotho’s health care sector via its HIV/AIDS programs – Lesotho has one of the highest rates of infection in the world.
Lesothan officials believe there must be a mistake. They hope the tariff pause will become permanent. And they say they plan to appeal to the White House to explain how such a rate on their goods cannot be possible.
At the same time, there is a mad scramble to figure out what to do – with some saying they will have to look for other markets.
“It’s time to be exploring our possibilities elsewhere,” Lesotho’s trade minister, Mokhethi Shelile, told South African broadcaster SABC. Still, he added that he worried that the country wouldn’t survive the double shock of the tariffs and the USAID cuts.
Workers also wonder if they will survive.
“My hope and wish is that our prime minister could somehow reach out to President Trump and ask him to at least show some compassion for Lesotho,” Nthabiseng Khalele, a garment factory worker, told the Guardian. “If we lose our jobs here, I’m almost certain that many of us will end up sleeping on empty stomachs.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
China Denies Accusations of Military Involvement in Ukraine
UKRAINE
China on Wednesday denied any military involvement in the Ukraine war, after Ukrainian forces captured two Chinese nationals in the country’s east who were allegedly fighting for the Russian army, the Wall Street Journal reported.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian troops fighting in the Donetsk region apprehended two Chinese nationals, highlighting their documents, bank cards, and personal data.
Zelenskyy added there were “many more Chinese citizens in the occupier’s units than just two.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha later said Kyiv has summoned Beijing’s diplomats in Ukraine “to condemn this fact and demand an explanation,” CNN added.
But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian countered that Beijing is “verifying information” with Ukraine while rejecting Zelenskyy’s claims that more Chinese nationals have joined Russian troops.
Lin added that the Chinese government has always asked its nationals to avoid armed conflict areas or any form of participation in any such conflict.
Russia did not comment on Ukraine’s claims.
It is unclear if the captured Chinese nationals were soldiers or volunteers, but US and other Western officials noted that there was no “evidence of state sponsorship here.” They suggested that the detained individuals were mercenaries – among thousands who have joined Russia’s military for money since the war began more than three years ago.
Still, their presence prompted questions about China’s ongoing role in the war in Ukraine.
Beijing has maintained neutrality in the conflict, although it has supported Russia economically, but not explicitly militarily: Last year, Biden administration officials told CNN that China has provided Moscow with drones, technology for cruise missiles, and machine tools used in weapons production.
The US has also accused Beijing of prolonging the war and being a “major enabler” through its aid to Russia.
In contrast, North Korea has provided extensive military support to Moscow, sending thousands of troops to fight in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces had seized territory.
Germany Gets a Government
GERMANY
German conservatives led by chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz reached a coalition agreement with the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) on Wednesday, ending weeks of political uncertainty amid growing recession fears following US-imposed tariffs on Europe’s biggest economy, Reuters reported.
The deal follows an election victory in February by Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU): The party took the largest share of seats but fell short of a majority. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) came in second place.
Even so, all mainstream parties in Germany have refused to work with the AfD due to the country’s legacy of National Socialism.
The deal comes amid intense pressure on German politicians to quickly form a new government that can confront the historic challenges of the United States’ trade war. At the same time, Germans are concerned over the threat posed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The chancellor-in-waiting, who is expected to be sworn in in May, said that he intends to boost defense spending to brace for potential Russian aggression – especially now that the US wants to limit their involvement in European security – and to assist businesses facing rising costs and decreasing demand, according to CNN.
The new coalition has already unveiled new economic and tax reforms to revamp its sluggish economy as it faces an escalating trade conflict with the US that could deeply undermine its growth – Germany is one of the world’s leading exporters, and its economy is heavily dependent on trade.
Merz also said he intends to tighten immigration and asylum policies, steering away from the more liberal immigration politics of his conservative predecessor, Angela Merkel, who governed during the 2015 European migration crisis, when more than one million migrants entered Germany.
Earlier this week, Germany ordered a halt to the United Nations’ resettlement program applications.
France Restricts Birthright Citizenship in Mayotte
MAYOTTE
French lawmakers sparked outrage on Tuesday after they passed a bill to restrict birthright citizenship only for Mayotte, a French territory in the Indian Ocean that has seen a surge in migration from its poorer neighbor, Comoros, France 24 reported.
Since 2018, children born in Mayotte needed to have a parent who had been a legal resident of the archipelago for at least three months at the time of birth to be granted French citizenship. Now, both parents need to have legally lived in Mayotte for at least a year, with exceptions made for single parents.
The process will differ from mainland France, where a child born to foreign parents can receive French nationality at the age of 13 if they have lived in France for at least five years.
The new measure was prompted by migration from the Comoros Islands. Mayotte, a French archipelago of about 320,000 people, attracts a large number of migrants from Comoros who travel there seeking economic opportunities.
According to French data, a 2019 study showed that half of the population consisted of foreigners, with one-third of them born in Mayotte.
While the bill does not change the “right of soil” or birthright citizenship, for people in the rest of France, leftist parties criticized the bill and said it might pave the way for further restrictions on the constitutional right.
The French far-right has made no mystery of wanting to review the right of soil.
“The prospect of obtaining French nationality is an undeniable factor in irregular migration” to Mayotte, said Philippe Gosselin of the far-right Republican Party, who proposed the bill. French Prime Minister François Bayrou was also supportive, suggesting that a similar measure could be created for Guiana, another French overseas territory, according to Le Monde.
French justice minister Gerald Darmanin said birthright citizenship granted by the French constitution should come under review entirely, possibly in a referendum.
DISCOVERIES
Dinosaur Dandies
Movies portray dinosaurs as gray monsters covered in scales, but scientists have long known that, in reality, many had bold patterns and bright, flashy feathers.
In contrast, the mammals that coexisted with them all had dark brown or gray fur, a color that could have played a role in their survival, according to a new study.
“Mammals were living in the shadow of the dinosaurs, quite literally,” said Jasmina Wiemann, a molecular paleobiologist at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the study. They probably lived as nocturnal beings to avoid the giant dinosaurs active during the day, she added.
To study the color of mammals from the Mesozoic era – also known as the Age of Dinosaurs – and which lasted from 250 to 66 million years ago, scientists analyzed fossils that preserve melanosomes, “the intracellular structures in living animals’ skin, feathers, and fur that contain the pigment melanin,” explained Science Magazine.
Searching for color in the fossil record can explain how ancient creatures camouflaged themselves, competed for social status, or sent cues to potential mates.
Researchers created a database of the fur color and melanosomes of 116 modern mammals such as monkeys, bats, and cats.
They then developed a model that predicted fur color from the shape of a melanosome and found a recurring correspondence between one melanosome’s shape and one fur color across all species. Red and orange fur had spherical melanosomes, while dark fur had more elongated melanosomes.
Researchers then studied the fossil of a newly discovered ancient mammal that lived about 160 million years ago in what is now northeastern China. The fossil showed hair impressions all around its body, even between limbs, indicating the mammal had fur-covered membranes, like a modern flying squirrel.
This medium-sized creature, weighing about as much as a billiard ball, was interpreted as a glider. Researchers named it Arboroharamiya fuscus – fuscus meaning “dark” or “dusky” in Latin.
They then looked at the melanosomes from A. fuscus and five other mammal fossils under an electron microscope and put the measurements in their model made of living animals’ melanosomes. The fossil mammals’ melanosomes looked oval-shaped, so their model predicted that all early mammals likely had dark brown fur.
Through fluorescence imaging, the study found that fossils had high concentrations of copper – associated with the melanin type that produces black and brown fur – and lacked zinc, which is associated with the melanin responsible for lighter colors of fur such as beige, yellow, and red.
Researchers also think that dark fur helped them regulate their body temperature, as dark colors absorb more light and retain heat to stay warm during the night.
“Once the dinosaurs were gone, then (mammals) were free to take on numerous colors,” said lead study author Matthew Shawkey.