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Korea Herald
17 hours ago
- Business
- Korea Herald
[Contribution] KCS steps up to navigate ‘fog of war' in global tariffs
Carl von Clausewitz, the German military theorist, introduced the concept of the "Fog of War" in his seminal work "On War." He described war as a realm of unpredictable uncertainty, where quick and accurate judgment by commanders is crucial amid incomplete information and unforeseen variables. Today, the rapidly shifting US tariff policies and the responses from major economies have created a global trade environment reminiscent of Clausewitz's fog-covered battlefield. In a global economy where visibility is limited and uncertainty prevails, Korean businesses must work to reduce unpredictability while strengthening their strategic decision-making and judgment capabilities. In this context, a clear understanding of tariff classification and rules of origin becomes a crucial first step in navigating the uncertainty sparked by President Trump's tariff policies. Tariff classification is the process of assigning serial numbers to imported and exported goods based on standards set by the World Customs Organization (WCO). These numbers not only determine applicable tariff rates but also dictate various import and export requirements. While WCO provides a unified framework, individual countries often interpret and apply these standards differently. As a result, the same product can be assigned different codes in different countries. Since March, the US has imposed a 25 percent tariff on certain items, including steel and aluminum derivatives. The challenge arises because the US applies these tariffs using its own classification system, the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUS). For Korean companies accustomed to Korea's classification system, determining whether their products fall under US tariff targets is not always clear-cut. As tariff differences grow sharper depending on product classification, businesses now face greater pressure to ensure accurate and strategic classification of their goods. The importance of rules of origin has also risen significantly under the evolving US tariff regime. Under the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement, product origin has traditionally been determined using rules such as the change in tariff classification criterion or value content criterion. However, recent US measures have shifted this to the Substantial Transformation Criterion, even for items subject to bilateral tariffs, regardless of FTA rules. Under this standard, US customs authorities determine origin based on whether a product has undergone substantial changes in name, use, or character. The lack of clear, consistent case rulings makes it extremely difficult for businesses to predict outcomes. Moreover, Korean companies may suffer indirect harm — such as customs delays or post-entry verifications — if products from other countries with higher tariff rates are fraudulently labeled as Korean to evade duties. In response to such uncertainty, the Korea Customs Service established the KCS Response Headquarters for Global Tariff Changes and Domestic Industry Protection (K-GTR H.Q.s) on March 28. This task force goes beyond simply providing information. It functions as a comprehensive, proactive unit managing international cooperation, preemptive customs and tax risk assessments, close business support, and crackdowns on illegal circumvention of trade laws. Since its launch, the K-GTR H.Q.s has prioritized resolving uncertainties surrounding tariff classifications and rules of origin while supporting corporate decision-making. It has swiftly distributed correlation charts between Korean and US tariff codes for key items such as steel, aluminum derivatives, automobiles, and auto parts. To further ease classification-related confusion, it introduced fast-track pre-ruling procedures and expanded consultation services with the US tariff classification center. In the area of origin rules, the headquarters has begun immediate information sharing on non-preferential rules of origin and case rulings that can assist business planning. Customized consulting and preventive inspections are also underway to help firms comply. To prevent Korean exports from being harmed by falsely labeled foreign goods, the Korea Customs Service is intensifying inspections — particularly in cooperation with US Customs and Border Protection and industry associations — on critical sectors like steel and furniture, which are vulnerable to origin fraud. Looking ahead, the Korea Customs Service aims to continue serving as a reliable guide for Korean exporters amid the turbulent waves of global tariff conflicts. It plans to provide ongoing classification information for US-targeted sectors such as semiconductors and pharmaceuticals and to roll out notification services for potential violations of origin rules, particularly for companies handling steel and aluminum derivative products. Waiting for the fog to lift will not lead to a path forward. Someone must carry the light and lead the way. The Korea Customs Service pledges to be that light, helping Korean businesses move forward with confidence, even through the haze of uncertainty.
Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Reciprocity done wrong
Core to President Donald Trump's view of global trade is the notion of 'reciprocity' — that the United States should do to other countries' exports what they do to ours. The idea, which Trump has embraced for decades, has a certain seductive simplicity: Isn't it only fair that 'we' charge 'them' what 'they' charge 'us,' and that if 'they' want relatively free access to 'our' market, then 'we' should have the same in 'theirs'? Alas, reciprocity is not that simple — at least not how the current administration implements it. Indeed, the concept of reciprocity has been central to the modern global trading system, starting with the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934 and the creation of the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade in 1947 and continuing today in bilateral and regional free trade agreements, including Trump's own U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Yet, his personal version of reciprocity is something very different, and it's a catastrophically bad idea for practical, economic and geopolitical reasons — some of which the Trump administration itself has now admitted. In response to the president's April 2 'Liberation Day' proposal of tariffs as high as 49%, global markets fluctuated wildly. Less than a week later, Trump announced a 90-day suspension on tariffs exceeding 10%. He says he's willing to negotiate new trade deals during this pause, but their details — and final U.S. tariff rates — are unclear. In reality, however, the best outcome for the U.S. economy would be restoring much of the status quo of existing reciprocal trade pacts — a status quo that both Trump and former President Joe Biden wrongly abandoned. Here's why. Trump's reciprocal tariff system suffers from an unavoidable tension between accuracy and speed. Reciprocity as Trump describes it would apply a different tariff rate for every imported product from every country, based on both that country's restrictions on the U.S. version of these goods and the United States' own tariff and nontariff measures already in place. For example, the United States would apply a 'reciprocal' tariff on pickup trucks from Germany that accounted for not only German restrictions on American truck imports (including the European Union's 10% tariff) but also the United States' existing restrictions on German trucks (including our 25% tariff). Enacting such a system, however, would be exceedingly difficult. For starters, there are more than 13,000 different products in the current U.S. tariff schedule, so applying a reciprocal tariff to all 186 member countries in the World Customs Organization would require more than 2.5 million different tariffs — an exponential increase over the current system and one that would demand vast government resources to create and administer. One trade lawyer recently told The New York Times that managing these new tariff lists would alone be 'a herculean task' for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, especially as countries change their policies, supply chains shift in response to the new reciprocal tariff regime or bad actors work to evade it. The government would also need to give the private sector time to adapt to and comply with the new system before it's activated. Currently, companies and customs brokers only pay close attention to where imported products are made for a small handful of products that get special duty rates, such as those falling under U.S. trade agreements or subject to various restrictions. All other shipments require no such efforts, as the tariff rate will be the same regardless. Under a new reciprocal system, on the other hand, these and other customs rules and procedures — some taking months to document — would matter not for a few products and countries but for every single thing entering the United States, no matter its origin or complexity. That's trillions of dollars-worth of goods each year imported by tens of thousands of U.S. companies. It would take them, their agents and their foreign suppliers months, if not longer, to ensure they're following the new rules and paying the proper tariff rates. Calculating the appropriate U.S. reciprocal tariff would be a similarly herculean task. First, the government would need to define and quantify all the foreign barriers supposedly blocking U.S. exports and then convert them all into a single 'tariff equivalent' for the country and product at issue. This includes relatively simple policies like tariffs and quotas, but also many domestic government policies with highly uncertain and indirect trade effects. Government subsidies, regulations, intellectual property rules, Europe's value-added taxes and other domestic policies can have indirect trade effects. Even the metric system could be a nontariff barrier where foreign regulations require its use (e.g., on speedometers). It would take years for U.S. government economists and lawyers to distill all these effects into a final tariff number for every country. The same issues would apply to U.S. trade barriers, which an accurate reciprocal system must consider. The United States has low average tariffs but many high ones on politically sensitive products like sugar, dairy products, textiles and apparel, footwear, and pickup trucks. Washington also employs many nontariff measures to impede foreign competition, including subsidies, quotas, 'Buy American' restrictions, domestic shipping restrictions and regulatory protectionism like the FDA's near-blockade on baby formula. The United States is also one of the world's biggest users of 'trade remedy' measures, such as antidumping duties and today applies more than 700 of these restrictions on mainly manufactured goods like steel and chemicals. According to the independent Global Trade Alert, which monitors nations' trade liberalization and protectionist policies, the United States has implemented the most 'harmful' trade interventions — tariffs, nontariff barriers, subsidies, etc. — of any nation since late 2008. Any other approach to 'reciprocity' could move faster but would inevitably produce a system disconnected from economic reality, omitting certain products and countries or setting new U.S. tariff rates that exceed those needed to equalize trade treatment between two countries. This result not only would mean greater economic pain for the American consumers and companies forced to pay the tariffs and greater uneasiness from investors about the U.S. government's competence, but would also dissolve the tariffs' justification, i.e., that 'fairness' demands U.S. tariffs mirror foreign trade barriers. The latter flaw, in turn, would undermine the tariffs' supposed goal of negotiating lower barriers to U.S. exports abroad: high, 'spitballed' tariffs are sure to alienate foreign governments — prodding them to see 'reciprocity' as just a bad-faith excuse for protectionism — and make them less likely to engage in future talks. In choosing between accuracy and speed, the Trump administration chose the latter. Unveiled on April 2, the Trump administration's reciprocal tariff regime included both a 10% global tariff and even higher tariffs based not on an actual assessment of a particular country's trade barriers or U.S. trade barriers but simply the nation's overall trade surplus with the United States. The U.S. trade representative admitted that it examined only overall balances because 'individually computing the trade deficit effects of tens of thousands of tariff, regulatory, tax and other policies in each country is complex, if not impossible.' But few, if any, economists consider the shortcut calculation legitimate. Trade balances, economists explained, were a terrible proxy for unfair trade practices, and the tariff rates presented were unrealistic at best. Final 'reciprocal' rates were often far higher than any reasonable estimate of the foreign countries' barriers. Tariffs were carelessly slapped on uninhabited islands and U.S. military bases. Nations considered free trade exemplars and partners were given the same tariff rate as notorious trade scofflaws. Small, poor nations ended up with some of the highest tariffs for the trade-crime of simply being too small or poor to buy much American stuff. And U.S. trade barriers were ignored entirely. Many economists further explained that the calculation used to assign the tariffs suffered from several basic errors, and that — even granting the administration's flawed approach — a proper calculation would generate tariffs four times smaller than what Trump's team got. The backlash even extended to the economists the Trump administration itself cited to justify its tariff calculations, with many of them openly disagreeing with both the process and results. As one put it, 'There's not a lot of trained economists I know of, including myself, who would argue that trade imbalances are an important metric for policymaking. Yet the people who are setting policy have decided it's a really important metric.' Nevertheless, the practical problems with a reciprocal tariff system — even the administration's over-simplified one — go beyond its form. For starters, varying U.S. tariff rates on the same goods from different countries would encourage companies and governments to circumvent the highest levies, adding even more pressure on customs enforcement along the way. Companies could, for example, reroute their products' supply chains to locate final assembly in countries that now face lower U.S. tariffs. Or they could adjust a product's input sourcing, so that it legally originates in a lower-tariff place. Or they'll find other legal loopholes — and illegal ones too — to continue shipping goods to the United States at the lowest possible cost. We saw exactly these moves in response to previous U.S. tariffs on steel, aluminum and certain Chinese goods. Once the measures were imposed, multinational corporations got to work finding ways around them. Thus, for example, U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports proved ineffective in blocking out Chinese content because companies found creative (mostly legal) ways to still get those goods in the country. Logistics professionals proved similarly nimble when the pandemic and other disasters hit, quickly rerouting goods and supply chains to keep trade flowing. A system with widely varying tariff rates across dozens of countries is sure to do the same, turning U.S. trade policy and enforcement into a game of global whack-a-mole as private firms work to evade high tariffs and U.S. officials respond to said evasion with additional tariffs. Tariff evasion is as old as the republic itself, and — as we've learned quite well with our domestic tax system — smart lawyers, accountants and other professionals make a killing (for them and their clients) exploiting regulatory complexity. The reciprocal tariff system will be complexity on steroids. There are also more fundamental problems with Trump's reciprocal vision, regardless of its design. First, it requires the United States to apply high tariffs on products that we don't make for reasons that have nothing to do with trade or economic policy. Due to climate and geography, for example, the United States produces relatively little coffee, imports a vast quantities, and — to the delight of caffeine addicts everywhere — has applied a zero tariff on imports of green coffee beans from all countries in the world. Under Trump's proposed system, however, coffee from large exporters Vietnam and Indonesia would have faced 45% and 32% tariffs, respectively, solely because those nations ran large trade surpluses with the United States. Such tariffs would not encourage domestic coffee production or boost U.S. coffee exports, yet they would harm American coffee roasters and consumers. Plenty of other food and beverage products, along with specialty or name-brand manufactured goods, are made only by specific countries and companies and would suffer the same fate. Furthermore, a reciprocal system that automatically matches U.S. tariffs to foreign trade barriers outsources U.S. trade policymaking to other governments. If officials in Tokyo, for example, put high restrictions on U.S. goods, reciprocity demands we do the same on Japanese goods, regardless of our tariffs' effects on American companies and consumers or their consistency with other U.S. government objectives. Indeed, given that around half of all U.S. imports are manufacturing inputs like steel, reciprocal tariffs could raise American manufacturers' costs and in turn reduce their output and export competitiveness — precisely the opposite of what the reciprocal system was allegedly supposed to do. In general, the United States should remain free to improve its economy without the need to wait for other countries to do likewise. Regardless of whether you think the United States needs higher or lower tariffs, the decision should be based on what's best for most Americans and the economy as a whole, not what some random government official in some random country decides (often for political, not economic, reasons). That approach has worked well for the United States for centuries, and abandoning it is particularly nonsensical when urged by 'America First' proponents who decry — sometimes rightly — 'globalist' policies that cede U.S. policymaking and sovereignty to foreign powers and international organizations. Finally, the Trump administration's reciprocal tariffs ignore that the traditional model of reciprocity has successfully eliminated foreign barriers to U.S. goods and services and increased U.S. exports — precisely what Trump says he's trying to achieve. Under this longstanding model, a government agrees to lower most of its trade barriers in exchange for another government doing the same, with both seeking an overall balance of concessions — not a line-by-line mirror image — to allow for different carveouts that reflect each nation's political sensitivities. Following extensive negotiations involving multiple domestic stakeholders (business, labor, legislatures, etc.), the governments lock in their new market access terms via a comprehensive agreement. The United States today has 14 of these bilateral and regional free trade agreements with 20 different countries, and each eliminates not only the vast majority of partner countries' tariffs (typically more than 98%) but also many nontariff barriers to U.S. goods, services and investment. As a result of these deals, U.S. exports to partner countries have increased faster than U.S. exports to the rest of the world. By 2023, 47% of U.S. goods exports went to places committed to accepting exports from the United States duty-free. American companies and consumers, meanwhile, have gained from improved access to imports from these same places. And both American and foreign investors have gained from the certainty that — unlike the executive actions Trump has enacted — a trade agreement hardwired into law provides. Overall, studies have repeatedly shown that U.S. trade agreements have generated small but significant improvements in the American economy, boosting gross domestic product, manufacturing output, inflation-adjusted wages and total employment for both college-educated workers and those with only a high school degree. And all these gains were achieved without new and costly tariffs and trade wars. Indeed, the sad irony of our current reciprocal tariff experiment is that several of the most prominent targets of Trump's tariffs — Japan (24%), Vietnam (46%), Malaysia (24%), Taiwan (32%), and Indonesia (32%) — are currently members of or applicants to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, as is the U.K. (10%). Like all trade agreements, the CPTPP reduces the vast majority of member countries' barriers to other parties' exports. But Trump abandoned the deal on his first day in office in 2017. If he'd instead championed it, tariffs on almost all of the member countries' products would today be at zero. Given these facts and the partnership's goal of countering China's influence in the Asia Pacific, Trump's abandonment of the deal is in retrospect a colossal mistake. Past U.S. free trade agreements and the reciprocity model on which they're based weren't perfect — they are, after all, political creatures and suffer from the kinds of practical, economic and legal flaws that government 'sausage-making' inevitably produces. Real weaknesses aside, old-school reciprocal trade deals successfully reduced foreign trade barriers and increased U.S. exports — and did so without the costly trade wars, heightened geopolitical tensions and vast market uncertainty we're seeing today. Those harms, in fact, were just what the traditional reciprocal system sought to avoid — harms that resulted from decades of tit-for-tat tariff actions a century ago. Returning to that system may unfortunately require relearning those lessons the hard way today. Scott Lincicome is the Cato Institute's vice president of general economics and its Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies.
New York Times
15-04-2025
- New York Times
19 Big Cats Rescued in Spain as Police Raid Animal Smuggling Ring
The Spanish police say they rescued 19 exotic felines from a home on the island of Majorca that were bound for sale on the growing illegal world market for big cats, and they arrested the Russian couple who owned them. With demand for large felines like lions and tigers high in some quarters — some consider them a status symbol — there is a brisk business for criminal rings that traffic in them, even if the animals are protected or endangered species. In a statement Monday announcing the arrests, the Spanish authorities said the two suspects were tied to a smuggling ring that works on multiple continents. 'The detainees sold various animal species internationally through internet portals, including white tigers, black leopards, hyenas, and pumas,' they said. When the police raided their home, they said, they found a caracal — a cat notable for its elongated ears — and two servals, as well as 16 hybrids. International travel documents from Russia, Belarus and China for more than 40 others animals were also discovered, the police said. 'The operation has uncovered a global criminal organization involving breeders, transporters, and veterinarians,' they said. While much of the exotic pet trade worldwide is legal, a spike in demand attributed in great part to the popularity of unusual companion animals on social media over the past decade has led to an increase in illegal trafficking. That in turn has contributed to the depletion of populations in the wild, conservationists say. The demand for big cats has risen even as regulations to protect them have increasingly been put in place. In the Persian Gulf, exotic pets are now a must-have accessory for many of the wealthy. Some may have been inspired by images of Dubai's crown prince, Hamdan bin Mohammed al-Maktoum, with his pet lion, Moochi. In the Balkans, too, big cats have become popular as influencers post photos of their felines on social media. And big-cat trafficking has become big business in South Africa, where conservationists say criminal networks take advantage of fragmented regulations. The illegal wildlife trade takes in about a $20 billion global business annually, according to Interpol, and it is intertwined with other criminal activity. In February, the international policing organization said that nearly 20,000 animals, all endangered or protected species, had been rescued in a global operation with the World Customs Organization. Among them were 18 big cats. A 2024 United Nations report on wildlife crime said that 'organized crime is evident in various specialized wildlife trafficking roles, such as export, import, brokering, storage, keeping and breeding live specimens or handling the interface with processors.' The Spanish authorities said that the big cats peddled by the suspects they arrested were likely smuggled into Europe from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Because animal trafficking is an international affair, conservationists say that curbing the illegal wildlife trade requires a unified global approach to enforcement and regulation. The United States in 2022 passed the Big Cat Public Safety Act, which placed restrictions on the breeding, sale and private ownership of some exotic felines, including lions, tigers, leopards, snow leopards, jaguars, cougars, clouded leopards and cheetahs. A 2020 Netflix documentary about a man who ran an exotic animal park in Oklahoma, 'Tiger King, helped fuel passage of the law. Because animal trafficking is an international affair, conservationists say that curbing it requires a unified global approach. Since 1975, a multilateral agreement called the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, has been in effect, but with only limited success. The pact 'was never intended to address wildlife trafficking as a serious transnational crime,' said Dr. Meganne Natali, a legal consultant specializing in wildlife crime and conservation. 'Efforts to combat wildlife trafficking call for a decisive shift toward harmonized and dissuasive criminal sanctions at the international level,' Dr. Natali said.
Forbes
11-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Let's Implement Tariffs In A Way That Reduces Tariff 'Sludge'
If appropriately implemented, new tariffs could reduce 'sludge.' Sludge is a term the podcast 'Freakonomics' applies to unnecessary complexity that makes life more difficult and stressful. Sludge raises costs and distorts the efficient operation of an economy. No area of any economy may have more sludge than tariff classification. A specific tariff involves a fixed fee levied on one unit of an imported good. This tariff varies according to the type of goods imported. For example, a country could levy a $15 tariff on each imported shirt but a $250 tariff on every smartphone. The phrase "ad valorem" is Latin for "according to value." This type of tariff is levied on a good based on a percentage of that good's value. An example of an ad valorem tariff would be a 10% tariff levied by the European Union on U.S. automobiles that come complete with internal combustion engines. Thus, for a $50,000 car, the tariff would be $5,000. In contrast, the US has levied a tariff of 2.5% for the same goods from EU entering the US. A compound tax is a combination of both specific and ad valorem tariffs. In the case of China, the Trump administration is proposing very high ad valorem tariffs imposed on top of the existing specific tariffs. However, if ad valorem tariffs are going to be significant, why even have specific tariffs? This is an opportunity to reduce trade sludge. Specific tariffs are based on the international Harmonized System. This is a global system of nomenclature that is used to describe most world trade in goods. This is maintained by the World Customs Organization. Virtually all countries base their tariff schedules on the WCO's Harmonized System. HS codes are six-digit codes. The Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States is based on the harmonized system. This is the primary resource for determining customs duties classifications for goods imported into the United States. The Harmonized Tariff Schedule classifies a good based on its name, use, and/or the material used in its construction and assigns it a ten-digit classification code number. The HS code is a subset of the U.S.'s tariff schedule - the first six digits are the same. There are over 17,000 unique classification code numbers in the U.S. But worse than the sheer number of classification codes is the complexity. Using the right HS code allows companies to pay the correct tariffs. Paying the right tariffs is necessary to avoid hefty government fines as well as to protect brand reputation. The problem is an incredible gap between how products are described commercially and how they are expressed in the national customs tariff schedules. To say that HS codes are non-intuitive would be a massive understatement. What a regular person would describe as 'baby food' in HS speak is known as a 'homogenized composite food preparation;' a 'hair blower' is an 'electrothermic hairdressing apparatus;' before you can classify 'rayon,' you have to know whether this is an 'artificial' or a 'synthetic' fiber; and if you were classifying an automotive part, like a car alarm, you might think you would go to the section of the HS code focused on automobiles, but no – this is an electronic signaling device. This has resulted in historic error rates of up to 30%. Global trade management systems leveraging AI do reduce classification errors. How much is unclear. Further, the application of AI to GTM solutions comes with challenges. First, the AI's output is only as good as the data input. Data cleansing can help, but often, improving data quality will require supply chain partners to get involved. Freight forwarders may fear that collaboration could lead them to become an unnecessary middleman. The bigger the model, the better the AI model. A global trade management solution has components for electronically messaging trade authorities with documents on the number of imported goods and their classification, process workflow, and an updated database of how the tariffs should be applied to specific products. The best databases for trade content are built using a public cloud architecture. In other words, the database is shared by all the customers using a particular GTM solution. This allows for much, much larger AI models. However, public clouds do significantly increase the need for strong cybersecurity. AI can also have a 'black box' problem where users don't understand how the answer was generated. If a trade professional does not understand the logic, they are unlikely to use it. Further, if a shipper does get audited, it is important that the GTM system provides an audit trail that shows how goods were classified with a logic tree that explains why the goods were classified that way. In many jurisdictions, this audit trail demonstrates 'good faith' and means that even if a declared good was misclassified, the company would be given credit for exercising diligence and would thus be likely to avoid the most severe penalties. More likely, they would not be penalized at all. Many shippers, if audited, have no ability to explain why they classified goods as they did. Black box AI has the same problem. For significant ad valorem tariffs, there is an opportunity for simplification. However, trade classification is not the only contributor to trade sludge. The White House issued an executive order explaining their rationale for reciprocal tariffs and why trade disparities are a national emergency. They pointed to non-tariff barriers that make it harder for U.S. firms to export goods. Non-tariff barriers include import barriers driven by licensing restrictions, unnecessarily restrictive quality standards on goods or technical regulations, sanitary measures that restrict trade without furthering safety objectives, and several other categories of restrictions. One goal of the tariffs is to negotiate reductions in these non-tariff barriers.
Zawya
11-04-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Nigeria: Edun advocates accelerated customs reforms to strengthen intra-African trade
The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr Wale Edun, has called for accelerated customs reform across West and Central Africa, in a bold move to revamp regional trade and bolster economic resilience. This call to action was made at the opening of the Fourth Conference of Development Partners of the World Customs Organization for West and Central Africa (WCO-WCA) in Abuja, highlighting the need for deeper structural reforms to unlock the region's vast economic potential. Edun noted that intra-regional trade accounts for just 12 percent of the region's total trade, despite a combined population of 450 million and a GDP approaching $1 trillion. While the Nigerian Customs Service recorded a 90 percent year-on-year revenue increase and exceeded government targets by 20 percent, he highlighted the need to build on this momentum through deeper structural reforms. The Minister reaffirmed Nigeria's commitment to modernisation, citing the forthcoming Single Window Project expected in early 2026, and urged broader adoption of World Customs Organization instruments such as the Authorised Economic Operators programme and the Advanced Ruling system. He also emphasised the importance of donor coordination and long-term technical assistance to support sustainable reform. Many of the initiatives, Edun noted, are supported by concessional World Bank loans already reflected in the national budget and borrowing plan. The two-day conference brought together customs leaders, donors, and trade experts to align on regional strategies for enhancing trade facilitation and economic integration. Mohammed Manga,Director, Information and Public Relations, said as the region moves forward, one thing is clear: accelerated customs reform is a critical step towards unlocking West Africa's vast economic potential. With the right policies and partnerships in place, the region can unlock new opportunities for growth, trade, and economic resilience. He added that thus, the Fourth Conference of Development Partners of the World Customs Organization for West and Central Africa serves as a timely platform for stakeholders to align on regional strategies and drive progress towards a more prosperous and integrated West Africa.
