CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Before President Donald Trump abruptly changed course on tariffs, the 12th smallest African nation, Lesotho, was near the top of the list of countries whose products would be taxed at the U.S. border. Charles Fogelman, a professor in the Global Studies Program and in the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an expert on the politics of Lesotho, describes how the ever-changing tariff news and the cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development will affect this tiny nation. He spoke with News Bureau life sciences editor Diana Yates.
Why was Lesotho at the top of the list of countries targeted by the highest new tariffs?
Lesotho was caught in the crossfire on this. The “Mountain Kingdom” is minimally important to the U.S., but as a small, poor country with 2 million or so people, Lesotho is heavily influenced by foreign policy decisions made by the U.S.
Lesotho has benefitted from a Clinton-era law, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which allowed for American companies to use Lesotho’s textile industry as a manufacturing base. Many firms did, with Gap and Levi Strauss among the most prominent. Some Trump Golf-branded shirts were made in Lesotho. In the mid-2000s, the textile sector employed 50,000 Basotho, the primary ethnic group in the region. Most of those employees were women.
Lesotho’s other main export to the U.S. is the occasional diamond found in the country’s few mines. What this means, in aggregate, is that Lesotho exports about $240 million worth of goods to the U.S. but, because of its size, poverty, and location, Lesotho imports only a tiny fraction of that from the U.S. — goods worth less than $3 million in 2024.