Have Trump tariffs destroyed trade with Africa?

 Al Jazeerah thinks so:

but note that the actual article headline is:

Have Trump’s tariffs killed US-Africa preferential trade?

 they then go on to note:

The AGOA framework that saw African countries export duty free to the US is as good as dead, experts say.

...Donald Trump’s tariffs announcement on most trading partners, including several in Africa, will affect businesses and people across the continent and likely force more producers to trade with China, experts have warned....

Lesotho, the small Southern African country that Trump claimed “ no one has heard of” last month, was hit with the highest tariff rates at 50 percent.

then they repeat the lie that cutting USAID, the organization full of grift, kickbacks, and formenting revolutions, resulted in dead people.  

The country, which carries the second-highest HIV burden of any other in the world, is still reeling from the shock of Trump’s sweeping aid cuts earlier that have gutted HIV response efforts across the region.

 

I suspect that the money for HIV drugs will be reintroduced, but that maybe all the money sent to push gay rights and encourage sex edcuation for promiscuity might have to be cut first (Biden's policy changed the aim of Pepfar from treatment to prevention, meaning push the safe sex agendan in the media and in schools, and protect minority rights, aka let the perverts and sex tourists seduce street kids of both sexes)

Other Southern African countries hit were: Madagascar (47 percent); Mauritius (40 percent); Botswana (37 percent); and Angola (32 percent).

I hate to say this, but this is about protecting US blue collar jobs, and bring them back to the USA. And two other factors: China was using the no tariff for their profit, not the profit of the locals, and of course corruption also was using these laws to divert money into the hands of the crooked businessmen and politicians.

Did you know China lifted their tariffs on African countries last December? That meant that they had tariffs on African goods until then. 

But no one cried about that.

Sigh.

US Congo mineral deal in the future?

 Austin Bay, a military strategy writer on StrategyPage, has one of his syndicated columns discussing the story that the DRC asked Trumpieboy to rescue them 

In mid-February, a firm representing a Democratic Republic of the Congo legislator contacted several U.S. officials... . The letter sketched a sub-Saharan version of President Donald Trump's Ukraine minerals peace initiative.

what are they talking about? 

Would the U.S. be interested in acquiring or investing in Congo's enormous and globally unique trove of critical and rare mineral resources? The DRC has gold, copper, cobalt, tin, tantalum (coltan), lithium, gold and diamonds. The uranium for America's World War II atom bombs came from the then-Belgian Congo. Mobile phone and computer manufacturers need coltan (columbite-tantalite). Cobalt is a 21st-century treasure. Congo is the world's largest producer of cobalt ore, a must-have for electric vehicles.

so why not ask China to do this? Their propaganda always assures us that they will be the macho guys to stop the bad guys in Africa etc? Well, as any Filipino could tell you, China Lies.

In 2006 and 2007, Chinese front companies began buying DRC cobalt, copper and rare earth mineral operations. In 2008 and 2009, China signed the so-called China Deal of 2008 the DRC's Kabila dictatorship. The overall deal was supposedly worth billions. China was supposed to build roads and other infrastructure. It built ... next to nothing. In 2021, Congo condemned China and began legal proceedings to end Beijing's fraud.

peacekeepers also were no good.

But then the Rwanda connection:

The most effective militia is M23 - the March 23 Movement. Last time I looked, M23 had taken control of North Kivu's capital, Goma. The DRC government calls M23 as a terrorist organization controlled by Rwanda in order to exploit Congolese mineral resources. Rwanda, currently led by a government dominated by the Tutsi tribe, says M23 is a Congolese Tutsi militia defending Tutsi rights.

One of my human rights newsletter points out they are just trying to protect their people, and warned me not to believe the MSM propaganda that they are bad.

Lots of analysis about this in the essay.

One doubts that the US wants to get involved: The mess should be handled by Europe, by France and Belgium and the UK who used to own these countries, not the US. However, China is trying to get rare earth minerals monopoly, and countering them might inspire Trumpiboy to do something.

And as you can see in the Ukraine, Europe is a paper tiger, and except for a small special forces types units are toothless. In contrast, the US has quite a few experienced combat soldiers.

Read the whole thing.