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The Executive Director of the International Trade Centre (ITC) has sounded the alarm, saying US President Donald Trump’s tariff war and aid cuts threaten the poorest nations’ recovery.
Smaller countries face a “perfect storm” due to Trump’s deadly combination of “a trade war and an aid war,” says Pamela Coke-Hamilton, Executive Director of the Geneva-based joint agency of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Coke-Hamilton, a former Jamaican diplomat, warned that the world’s poorest countries are being hit by a “double whammy” of Trump’s tariffs and deep cuts to international aid budgets.
Trump policies are undermining global efforts to eradicate poverty and tackle climate change, she warned, emphasizing that the combination of cutting aid and slapping tariffs is squeezing smaller developing countries that are still recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic and the rising costs of servicing international debt.
“This is a perfect storm because when aid has been cut in the past, trade has generally been sustainable and predictable; there has not been this double whammy,” the American-educated UN senior expert stressed.
Trump’s threat of 40 to 50 percent tariffs on countries such as Lesotho, Madagascar, and Mauritius risked severely damaging those economies, she warned.
Coke-Hamilton was speaking to the Financial Times ahead of a key UN conference opening in Seville, Spain, on Monday.
The sustainable development summit in Seville, which has been designed to renew global support for the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, is the first such conference in a decade.
The Trump administration formally withdrew from the summit earlier this month. It stated in March that it “rejects and denounces” the summit’s goals, which were agreed in 2015 and aim to eradicate poverty and promote sustainable development by the end of the decade.
Meanwhile, Trump, a Republican, claims that spending American taxpayers’ money on foreign aid by the US government is against his America First agenda.
Trump ordered a freeze on nearly all foreign aid programs right after he took office in January.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is expected to fall from $60 billion in 2024 to less than $30 billion in 2026, according to calculations by the Center for Global Development, a Washington-based think tank.
In regard to tariffs, Trump’s administration has failed to clinch any trade agreement with any of its dozens of trading partners.
Last week, the Republican president abruptly halted trade negotiations with Canada, citing its tax on US tech companies as a “blatant attack” and announcing plans to impose a new tariff rate on Canadian products within a week.
Trump’s tariffs have frequently caused volatility in financial markets and started to impact consumer spending, a crucial pillar of the US economy.
Most experts believe that Trump’s back-and-forth policies have deeply disturbed financial markets, pushed global supply chains to breaking point, sparked chaos in major ports, and significantly agitated the economic and political relationship between the US and other countries, especially China.
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Trump’s tariff war, aid cuts threaten poorest nations’ recovery: ITC director – PressTV
