3 ms·

Does anyone here know what is the impact of this for Lesotho in practice? I found an article[1] but perhaps someone here knows more or is there in person. > L

by thih9 2y ago

Does anyone here know what is the impact of this for Lesotho in practice? I found an article[1] but perhaps someone here knows more or is there in person. > Lesotho exported $237m of goods last year to the US and imported $2.8m. Agoa[2], which has allowed tariff-free access to the US market for thousands of product types since 2000, created a thriving garment industry, accounting for about 20% of GDP. > 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. > “(…) If we lose our jobs here, I’m almost certain that many of us will end up sleeping on empty stomachs.” [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/apr/04/lesotho-garment-workers-reel-trump-tariffs https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/apr/04/l... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Growth_and_Opportunity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Growth_and_Opportunity...

colechristensen 2y ago
I want the people who work to make the things I use to earn more than $150 per month. A sane tariff policy would be set up to penalize these very low wage exporters to give competitive advantage to exporters and local producers with higher wages but also to incentivize higher wages in a way that set rates make producers more profitable if they paid workers more (and likewise other human development and environmental etc issues)
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  Well, this gets closer. There used to be a garment industry in the USA...
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    > There used to be a garment industry in the USA... Yeah, but the last large piece of it (there are still some amall remnants) got wiped out with the most recent push for eliminating large scale non-penal slavery in the US. And, no, I don’t mean abolishing formal chattel slavery with the 13th Amendment, I mean the push to eliminate the informal de facto slavery that persisted in the US territory of the Confederation of the Northern Mariana Islands around the turn of the millenium.
  - colechristensen 2y ago
    There still is, just small. I quite like my American Giant tshirts for example.
- GIFtheory 2y ago
  I don’t see how tariffs magically create wealth for foreign exporters that translates into higher wages. Let’s say I can buy a $10 shirt from Lesotho with zero tariff. Now a 50% tariff gets imposed. I can either eat the tariff and pay $15, in which case Lesotho still gets their $10, or Lesotho can eat the tariff to keep their exports competitive, in which case Lesotho now makes $5. The part about giving a competitive advantage to local producers is true, though…
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    Maybe the $5 per garment could go to USAid, and fund care programmes in those countries. A truely laughable suggestion.
  - rocqua 2y ago
    Such a tarrif on low wage countries would prevent the exploitation of low wage countries. Because any county could easily 'defeat' the tarrif by setting a minimum wage. It doesn't help raise the people being exploited out of poverty. But it does prevent countries from getting stuck in a cycle of depending on low wage labor. Whether that works out better for the exploited is uncertain. But the alternative argument is effectively "these poor countries should be happy to let themselves be exploited" it is their only way out of poverty. And that really doesn't sit right with me.
  - colechristensen 2y ago
    for countries that pay a worker $10 a day, put a tariff on the goods produced by that worker to total $10 for countries that pay a worker $15 dollars a day put a tariff on the goods produced by that work to total $4 therefore someone importing goods produced by one worker in one day from the lower wage country would spend $20 for the goods from the lower wage country but only $19 for the goods for the higher wage country giving a competitive advantage for higher wages obviously that is a simplistic example but that's what i mean using tariffs to incentivize better behavior and level the playing field so the most exploitation doesn't make the most money
    - GIFtheory 2y ago
- rocqua 2y ago
  This makes sense. I think even MAGA might agree if you pitch it as "we use tarrifs to prevent American labor from being undercut. But it is clear that the reasoning here is "I want tarrifs, how do I easily get them". And then they found the easiest possible way to say something about 'countries putting a tarrif on the US'. The stupid theory behind this is effectively: not having a minimum wage is equivalent to putting a tarrif on the US. Which would suggest that the low US minimum wage is actually already a tarrif on the EU.
  - colechristensen 2y ago
    Pressure to improve trade imbalances is a good idea! Particularly with China and some of these extremely low wage countries. Democrats being silent on the topic or not wanting to do anything about it is one of the bigger deciding issues for the kind of moderates who would actually change their vote between parties. The current administration is like... if you're being charitable you can imagine at some point someone had a reasonable set of ideas that got filtered through a long string of fools in a game of telephone so now we have an angry toddler with a gun destroying the global economy on the basis of ideas which very well may have been interesting at the beginning of the chain but have long since descended into incoherence.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- pj_mukh 2y ago
  "incentivize higher wages in a way that set rates make producers more profitable if they paid workers more" That sounds amazing..how would that work?
  - SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
    You can just put in the trade agreement that the goods are subject to tariffs unless the workers who made them are paid enough. The USMCA, for example, has requirements along these lines for auto assembly (https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/usmca https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/usmca).
- Hojojo 2y ago
  What you're advocating for is these 30.000 people to lose their jobs, not earn anything and starve. How does that help them? Oh, right. You don't care about them, actually. You just have this vague ideal that people should earn more money. Maybe not even that. You just want tariffs for some inexplicable reason. Because tariffs cannot give these people higher salaries. That's not how any of this works.

by thih9 2y ago

colechristensen 2y ago

I want the people who work to make the things I use to earn more than $150 per month. A sane tariff policy would be set up to penalize these very low wage exporters to give competitive advantage to exporters and local producers with higher wages but also to incentivize higher wages in a way that set rates make producers more profitable if they paid workers more (and likewise other human development and environmental etc issues)

readthenotes1 2y ago
Well, this gets closer. There used to be a garment industry in the USA...
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > There used to be a garment industry in the USA... Yeah, but the last large piece of it (there are still some amall remnants) got wiped out with the most recent push for eliminating large scale non-penal slavery in the US. And, no, I don’t mean abolishing formal chattel slavery with the 13th Amendment, I mean the push to eliminate the informal de facto slavery that persisted in the US territory of the Confederation of the Northern Mariana Islands around the turn of the millenium.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  There still is, just small. I quite like my American Giant tshirts for example.
GIFtheory 2y ago
I don’t see how tariffs magically create wealth for foreign exporters that translates into higher wages. Let’s say I can buy a $10 shirt from Lesotho with zero tariff. Now a 50% tariff gets imposed. I can either eat the tariff and pay $15, in which case Lesotho still gets their $10, or Lesotho can eat the tariff to keep their exports competitive, in which case Lesotho now makes $5. The part about giving a competitive advantage to local producers is true, though…
- lostlogin 2y ago
  Maybe the $5 per garment could go to USAid, and fund care programmes in those countries. A truely laughable suggestion.
- rocqua 2y ago
  Such a tarrif on low wage countries would prevent the exploitation of low wage countries. Because any county could easily 'defeat' the tarrif by setting a minimum wage. It doesn't help raise the people being exploited out of poverty. But it does prevent countries from getting stuck in a cycle of depending on low wage labor. Whether that works out better for the exploited is uncertain. But the alternative argument is effectively "these poor countries should be happy to let themselves be exploited" it is their only way out of poverty. And that really doesn't sit right with me.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  for countries that pay a worker $10 a day, put a tariff on the goods produced by that worker to total $10 for countries that pay a worker $15 dollars a day put a tariff on the goods produced by that work to total $4 therefore someone importing goods produced by one worker in one day from the lower wage country would spend $20 for the goods from the lower wage country but only $19 for the goods for the higher wage country giving a competitive advantage for higher wages obviously that is a simplistic example but that's what i mean using tariffs to incentivize better behavior and level the playing field so the most exploitation doesn't make the most money
  - GIFtheory 2y ago
rocqua 2y ago
This makes sense. I think even MAGA might agree if you pitch it as "we use tarrifs to prevent American labor from being undercut. But it is clear that the reasoning here is "I want tarrifs, how do I easily get them". And then they found the easiest possible way to say something about 'countries putting a tarrif on the US'. The stupid theory behind this is effectively: not having a minimum wage is equivalent to putting a tarrif on the US. Which would suggest that the low US minimum wage is actually already a tarrif on the EU.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  Pressure to improve trade imbalances is a good idea! Particularly with China and some of these extremely low wage countries. Democrats being silent on the topic or not wanting to do anything about it is one of the bigger deciding issues for the kind of moderates who would actually change their vote between parties. The current administration is like... if you're being charitable you can imagine at some point someone had a reasonable set of ideas that got filtered through a long string of fools in a game of telephone so now we have an angry toddler with a gun destroying the global economy on the basis of ideas which very well may have been interesting at the beginning of the chain but have long since descended into incoherence.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
pj_mukh 2y ago
"incentivize higher wages in a way that set rates make producers more profitable if they paid workers more" That sounds amazing..how would that work?
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  You can just put in the trade agreement that the goods are subject to tariffs unless the workers who made them are paid enough. The USMCA, for example, has requirements along these lines for auto assembly (https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/usmca https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/usmca).
Hojojo 2y ago
What you're advocating for is these 30.000 people to lose their jobs, not earn anything and starve. How does that help them? Oh, right. You don't care about them, actually. You just have this vague ideal that people should earn more money. Maybe not even that. You just want tariffs for some inexplicable reason. Because tariffs cannot give these people higher salaries. That's not how any of this works.