President John Mahama has reacted to the newly imposed 10% tariff on Ghana’s exports by United States President, Donald Trump, describing the issue as unfortunate.
He expressed concern over the potential impact of the tariffs and said such an imposition is very severe for everybody.
Donald Trump, on April 2, 2025, announced a unilateral 10 percent tariff, effective April 5, 2025, covering imports from all countries, including Ghana, into the United States.
Mr. Mahama, who criticized Trump’s decision, indicated that global trade could be hit hard, including Ghana.
“We all accepted the rule-based trading system and it has served the world well because it has led to quite significant growth in GDP across the world, it is unfortunate that without resorting to the rules based system, one country unilaterally decides to increase tariffs across the board on all countries and Ghana got slapped with 10% which is the lowest in the times that were ruled out. But a country like Lesetho got slapped with 46% and if you understand that one of the largest contributors to Lesetho’s economy is the trade and garments industry exports under Agua to United States.
“Then you can be sure that it’s going to affect the small country like Lesetho – many of the factories that are set up there might look for areas where they can receive cheaper tariffs you know to be able to continue to export into the American market.
“So it has very severe implications for everybody and I believe that the multilateral world serves us all better than unilatera world where people just take decisions based on only their countries interests.”
He added that “we must look at the broader broader global partnerships and the global interest rather than just our parochial national interest.”
President John Mahama was speaking during a bilateral trade meeting with the President of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel, on Wednesday, April 9, 2025.
