When Limpho Lefalatsa first learned she had lost her job at a Lesotho garment factory after 12 years due to U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to hit her tiny African homeland with a crippling tariff on its exports, she was in shock. "I thought I was going insane. It made no sense," the 29-year-old said at her house in the capital Maseru. "When the truth started sinking in, I felt so helpless." Lefalatsa's monthly factory wage of around 3,000 rand ($168) had supported herself, sent her 12-year-old daughter to school and paid for the blood pressure medicine her elderly grandmother needs to survive. Now that income is gone, and she still does not understand why. She's not alone. When Trump announced punitive tariffs on imports for nearly all of the United States' trading partners in April, the Southern African mountain kingdom of Lesotho was singled out for the highest rate: 50%. Lesotho officials were baffled, not least since their country, which Trump disparaged as a nation "nobody has ever heard of", was the poster child of a flagship U.S. programme aimed at helping poor African economies develop through trade. The Trump administration has defended the tariffs as reciprocal, saying that Lesotho charges 99% tariffs on American goods. Lesotho officials say they do not know how the White House arrived at that figure. The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a written request for comment.
