The United States just moved the goalposts again, and this time the justification is forced labour. The Trump administration announced new tariffs of 10% and 12.5% on 60 trading partners — including the European Union — set to kick in the moment a temporary 10% global tariff expired at 6:01am Friday. This is not a coincidence. This is a pattern, and young Kenyans watching their export markets should understand exactly what is happening.
The administration insists these are not simply a replacement for the expiring levies — but the timing, the rates and the near-total coverage of US imports tell a different story. When a policy expires at 6:01am and a new one takes effect at exactly that same moment, the legal label changes but the economic pressure does not.
For Kenya and other African nations operating under AGOA — the African Growth and Opportunity Act — this moment demands urgent attention. AGOA’s preferential access was already under political pressure before this announcement. Now, with Washington rewriting the rules of global trade through a forced labour lens, African governments need to move fast: audit their labour legislation, engage US trade officials directly, and stop assuming preferential treatment is permanent. The rules are changing in real time, and the cost of being caught flat-footed will land hardest on the workers these tariffs claim to protect.
