In a statement released on Monday, the Office of the United States Trade Representative said that Rwanda would retain other benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which allows sub-Saharan African countries to export to the United States without facing tariffs but would, for example, lose the right to export duty-free apparel to the United States.<\/p>\n
The former US Trade Official, who helped design AGOA, told CNN that the Trump administration was threatening to suspend the trade benefit out of a “warped sense of America-first.”<\/p>\n
“The Trump administration is making a symbolic statement rather than a substantive statement,” she said. “I see America picking trade battles, but I was surprised we would have time to pick one with Rwanda. We are talking about such a small amount of trade.” She said<\/p>\n
The conflict playing out started when the Rwandan government increased import duties on used clothing from the United States from $0.25 to $2.50 per kilogram, a move that upset traders in the United States into filing a complaint.<\/p>\n
Critics of the US decision say the government has overreacted to the tariffs on used clothing, which affect just $17 million in US exports a year and target a country where average annual income is around $700.<\/p>\n
“One of the whole points of the agreement was to help African countries to develop an apparel manufacturing base, because we understood that apparel is the first entry point into manufacturing,” Whitaker said.<\/p>\n
According to Whitaker, the move goes against the original intent of the legislation.<\/p>\n
The African Growth and Opportunity Act, or AGOA is a piece of legislation that was approved by the U.S. Congress in May 2000. The initiative provides eligible countries in sub-Saharan Africa with duty-free access for exports of more than 6,400 products, into the US market.<\/p>\n
Recently, the Minister of Trade and Industry (MINICOM), Vincent Munyeshyaka said that the companies which used to export apparel and footwear products through AGOA, started connecting to new international markets.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor example C&H Garments has market in the United Kingdom and German. But, we discussed with them on exploring opportunities on local market because it needs clothes, they have started and currently are participating in the exhibition so that they showcase themselves to Rwandans,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn case industries stop production and people lose jobs or, as the government, we will decide on how to support them,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former US trade Official who worked on African issues under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Rosa Whitaker, disapproved of the decision on suspending some benefits oft Rwanda under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), saying the move goes against the original intent of the legislation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[72],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-37951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-featured-news-home","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37951"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=37951"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=37951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}