Struggling Ivory Coast cocoa farmers are worried about US tariff plans
Like many in Ivory Coast — the world's biggest cocoa producer — Konan Yao says cocoa has long provided a lifeline for him, but adverse weather and plant diseases have hurt harvests in recent years.
Now, cocoa farmers worry even more over President Donald Trump's plans to impose a 21% tariff on products from Ivory Coast — the highest among West African nations.
Although Trump has suspended the tariff plans for 90 days pending further review, authorities in Ivory Coast have warned that such tariffs could send the price of cocoa even higher and destabilize the local market by slowing their sales.
Ivory Coast produces between 2 million and 2.5 million metric tons of cocoa annually, with around 200,000 to 300,000 metric tons exported to the United States, according to the Coffee and Cocoa Council.
In 2023, Ivory Coast exported $3.68 billion worth of cocoa beans, its second biggest export after gold. The U.S. was its fourth-largest importer of cocoa beans, after the Netherlands, Malaysia and Belgium, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
For most local cocoa growers, any U.S. tariff could further shake a market already struggling with decreasing yields and shrinking funding that has limited farmers' ability to meet global demands for chocolate.
'If we hear the American president is going to put a tax on the price of cocoa, it's really not good for us, it doesn't help us,' said another cocoa farmer, Salif Traoré.
Already, cocoa prices were rising in the country, in part because of insufficient and irregular rainfall in Ivory Coast.
The U.K.-based Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit research firm has noted a 32% rise in the price of cocoa imported into the United Kingdom over the last three years, partially due to extreme weather conditions in parts of Africa where it's mainly grown. Together, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon produce about three-quarters of the world's cocoa.
Cocoa is traded on a regulated, global market. In Ivory Coast, the government usually sets cocoa prices at the onset of each season, with prices reflecting market trends and global prices. The local prices are, however, lower than the global market rates, thereby limiting the farmers' profit from high global prices.
Authorities say they are already considering cocoa price increases if the U.S. tariff comes into effect.
'Donald Trump's customs tax is causing us problems. We are already feeling the effects,' said Boss Diarra, coordinator of the local cocoa farmers' union in Bouaflé in central Ivory Coast. He pointed to bags of cocoa that he said farmers have been unable to sell.
Meanwhile, a U.S. tariff could mean more cocoa for European markets, said Bruno Marcel Iritié, researcher at the Ivorian Félix Houphouët-Boigny Polytechnic Institute. Some of the top importers of Ivory Coast cocoa are in Europe, market data show.
European customers 'will inevitably buy cheaper because when there is too much, the customer is king,' Iritié said.
___
For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse
The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Analysis-India-US spat over trade and oil threatens wider fallout
By Krishna N. Das, David Brunnstrom and Shivam Patel NEW DELHI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump's tirade against India over trade and Russian oil purchases threatens to undo two decades of diplomatic progress, analysts and officials say, and could derail other areas of cooperation as domestic political pressures drive both sides to harden their stances. India's opposition parties and the general public have urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to stand up to what they call bullying by Trump, who on Wednesday signed an executive order subjecting Indian imports to an additional 25% in duties on top of an existing 25% tariff, due to its big purchases of Russian oil. While India has emerged in recent years as a key partner for Washington in its strategic rivalry with China, its large U.S. trade surplus and close relations with Russia - which Trump is seeking to pressure into agreeing to a peace agreement with Ukraine - have made it a prime target in the Republican president's global tariff offensive. Trump's taunt that India could buy oil from arch enemy Pakistan has also not gone down well in New Delhi, said two Indian government sources. India has also rejected repeated claims by Trump that he used trade as a lever to end a recent military conflict between India and Pakistan. In an unusually sharp statement this week, India accused the U.S. of double standards in singling it out for Russian oil imports while continuing to buy Russian uranium hexafluoride, palladium and fertiliser. On Wednesday, it called the tariffs "unfair, unjustified and unreasonable," vowing to "take all actions necessary to protect its national interests." But New Delhi knows that any further escalation will hurt it in matters beyond trade, said the sources. Unlike China, India does not have leverage like supplies of rare earths to force Trump's hand to improve the terms of any trade deal, they said. In recent years, successive U.S. administrations, including Trump's first, carefully cultivated relations with India with an eye on it as a vital partner in long-term efforts to counter the growing might of China. But analysts say Trump's recent moves have plunged the relationship back to possibly its worst phase since the U.S. imposed sanctions on India for nuclear tests in 1998. "India is now in a trap: because of Trump's pressure, Modi will reduce India's oil purchases from Russia, but he cannot publicly admit to doing so for fear of looking like he's surrendering to Trump's blackmail," said Ashley Tellis at Washington's Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "We could be heading into a needless crisis that unravels a quarter century of hard-won gains with India." Indian state refiners have in recent days stopped buying Russian oil as discounts narrowed and pressure from Trump rose, Reuters has reported. NEW CHALLENGES FOR RELATIONS A more pressing challenge for India, analysts say, is the stark divergence between its priorities and Trump's political base on key issues such as work visas for tech professionals and offshoring of services. India has long been a major beneficiary of U.S. work visa programs and the outsourcing of software and business services, a sore point for Americans who have lost jobs to cheaper workers in India. Relations with India risk becoming a "football in American domestic politics," warned Evan Feigenbaum, a former senior State Department official under the Republican presidency of George W. Bush. "Issues that directly touch India are among the most partisan and explosive in Washington, including immigration and deportation, H1B visas for tech workers, offshoring and overseas manufacturing by U.S. companies, and technology sharing and co-innovation with foreigners," he wrote in a LinkedIn post. Since a 2008 deal to cooperate on civilian nuclear technology, the two countries have deepened intelligence sharing and defence cooperation and expanded interactions with Australia and Japan through the Quad grouping aimed at containing China's dominance in the Indo-Pacific. But fractures have appeared, despite Modi's rapport with Trump in his first term and then former President Joe Biden. Images in February of Indians deported by the U.S. on military planes, their hands and legs shackled, horrified the country just days before Modi went to see Trump seeking to stave off high tariffs. The relationship was also seriously tested in late 2023 when the U.S. said it had foiled a plot with Indian links to kill a Sikh separatist leader on U.S. soil. New Delhi has denied any official connection to the plot. "The Modi regime's credibility in the U.S. has gone down," said Sukh Deo Muni, a former Indian diplomat and a professor emeritus at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University. "And maybe there are people who think that India or Modi had to be brought back on track, if not taught a lesson. And if that trend continues, I'm quite worried that the challenge is quite powerful and strong for India to navigate." STRENGTHENING TIES WITH U.S. RIVALS One Indian government source said India needs to gradually repair ties with the U.S. while engaging more with other nations that have faced the brunt of Trump tariffs and aid cuts, including the African Union and the BRICS bloc that includes Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa. India is already making some moves with Russia and China. Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to visit New Delhi this year and on Tuesday, Russia said the two countries had discussed further strengthening defence cooperation "in the form of a particularly privileged strategic partnership." India has also boosted engagement with China, a change after years of tensions following a deadly border clash in 2020. Modi is set to visit China soon for the first time since 2018. "Russia will attempt to exploit the rift between the U.S. and India by proposing the restoration of the Russia-India-China trilateral and new projects in defence," said analyst Aleksei Zakharov at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. "India will undoubtedly be mindful of structural factors such as sanctions against Russia and will seek to find a compromise with the Trump administration." Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Boston Globe
11 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Stanford newspaper challenges legal basis for student deportations
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The lawsuit says that the newspaper, which is open to all students and has more than 150 members, according to the complaint, has weathered resignations and withdrawn stories by noncitizens who were concerned that publishing content about Israel or the conditions in the Gaza Strip could leave them vulnerable to deportation. Advertisement The climate of fear the lawsuit cites at Stanford follows a spate of arrests earlier this year, when the Trump administration began targeting prominent student activists in March, including Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, over their activism in speaking out against the Israeli government and the mounting death toll in Gaza. Advertisement 'They are going after lawfully present noncitizens for bedrock speech, like authoring an op-ed and going to protest,' said Conor Fitzpatrick, the supervising senior attorney at the foundation. 'And unless you have a blue passport with an eagle on it that says United States of America, they think they can throw you out of the country for it.' In those and other cases, immigration agents arrested the students after Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked the provision, deeming the students a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests. In each case, Rubio personally signed off on the decision to revoke a student visa or render a lawful permanent resident deportable after determining that those interests were at stake. 'Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump administration are trying to turn the inalienable human right of free speech into a privilege contingent upon the whims of a federal bureaucrat, triggering deportation proceedings against noncitizens residing lawfully in this country for their protected political speech regarding American and Israeli foreign policy,' the lawsuit says. The new lawsuit mirrored many elements of a case brought by another group, the American Association of University Professors, which is seeking to block the Trump administration from pursuing what it describes as a policy of 'ideological deportations' -- using the law to target activists based on their shared criticism of Israel and its conduct in the war. That case was argued before a federal judge during a two-week trial in Boston in July, and he is expected to decide this month whether to block the deportations on First Amendment grounds. The case raised similar concerns about chilled speech on college campuses, with testimony from faculty at several universities about how dramatically noncitizen academics had withdrawn from public life. Advertisement But lawyers in that case explicitly stopped short of arguing that using the foreign policy provision to target student demonstrators was unconstitutional, sidestepping a risky gambit in court over whether Rubio had abused the authority. That caution came as William G. Young, the judge in the case, expressed skepticism throughout the trial about whether he could rule against Rubio or others in the Trump administration given that they were exercising powers given to them by Congress. 'It seems to me we have a new administration who has, you know, absolutely the primary authority over the foreign policy of the United States,' Young said during closing arguments last month. But other judges have already contemplated the same questions the new lawsuit raises, concluding that using the foreign policy provision in the student activist cases was vague and probably violated the First Amendment. In the case involving Khalil, Judge Michael E. Farbiarz of the U.S. District Court in New Jersey wrote that using the foreign policy provision to detain him was probably unconstitutional, even though that did not factor into his decisions to order Khalil's release in June. Since the Supreme Court limited federal judges' ability to issue nationwide injunctions in June, any ruling in the case would likely apply only to the plaintiffs at Stanford. But the lawsuit aims to set a legal precedent that the organization hopes could be used more broadly. (STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.) Fitzpatrick, the foundation lawyer, said there were narrow but conceivable situations in which the use of the foreign policy law would be appropriate, such as if pro-Kremlin Ukrainian politicians who fled the country after Russia's invasion sought refuge in the United States and continued to work to undermine Kyiv from abroad. Advertisement 'That has an arguable constitutional basis,' he said. 'What does not have an arguable constitutional basis is someone going up to a podium, whether it's at a city council meeting or a local park, at a protest, voicing an opinion that would be completely protected if you or I said it, and the secretary of state saying, 'We don't like the ideas you're spreading -- get out.' 'That's un-American,' he said. This article originally appeared in
Miami Herald
11 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Was dropping atomic bombs on Japan justified? 80 years later, views have changed
American public opinion toward the atomic bombing of Japan has changed significantly over time. The latest poll from the Pew Research Center reveals that less than half of Americans currently view the bombings as justified, marking a notable drop from earlier years. The survey was conducted ahead of the 80th anniversary of the bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The two nuclear blasts killed around 200,000 people, many of whom were children, and left survivors with debilitating side effects, including higher rates of cancer and chronic illness. The attacks — which took place on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945 — were quickly followed by Japan's surrender to the U.S., which brought an end to World War II. They also signaled the dawn of the nuclear age, sparking a worldwide arms race that has led at least nine countries to develop atomic arsenals. In the recent Pew survey, 35% of respondents said the bombings were justified, while a slightly smaller share, 31%, said they were not justified. An additional 33% said they were not sure. The results appear to follow a trend of declining support for the nuclear attacks. In 1945 — in the immediate aftermath of the bombings — a Gallup poll found the vast majority of Americans, 85%, approved of the U.S. decision to drop the newly invented weapons on Japanese cities. Many years later, in 1990, another Gallup survey revealed that a much smaller share of respondents, 53%, approved of the attacks. And, in four subsequent Gallup surveys conducted between 1991 and 2005, approval fluctuated between 53% and 59%. In 2015 — on the 70th anniversary of the bombings — a Pew poll found 56% of Americans believed the attack was justified, while 34% said it was not. However, this survey did not include a 'not sure' option, unlike the most recent one. The latest survey — which sampled 5,044 U.S. adults June 2-8 — also revealed noticeable differences in views based on gender, partisanship and generational lines. For example, 51% of men said the bombings were justified, while just 20% of women said the same. Similarly, 51% of Republicans and those who lean Republican said the attacks were justified, while just 23% of Democrats and Democrat-leaning respondents said the same. Older Americans were also more likely than their younger counterparts to approve of the U.S. bombings. Nearly half of those 65 and older, 48%, said they were justified, while just 27% of 18- to 29-year-olds agreed. The poll — which has a margin of error of 1.6 percentage points — also asked respondents whether they believe the development of nuclear weapons has made the world more or less safe. The vast majority, 69%, said the creation of atomic weapons has made the world less safe. Just 10% said it's made the global community more safe, and 21% said they were not sure. When asked if nuclear weapons made the U.S. in specific safer, 47% said no and 26% said yes. Republicans were more likely than Democrats to say both that the development of nuclear weapons has made the world and the U.S. more safe.
