US abuse of tariffs dragging down world growth forecast; Chinese envoy slams 'cruel and absurd' levies on LDC 'heartbreaking'
Global Times
By Chu Daye and Ma Tong Published: Apr 23, 2025 12:12 AM
As hundreds of global finance leaders descend on Washington for the semi-annual gatherings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Group, the negative impacts of the US tariffs on the world's least developed countries (LDC) have come under media spotlight.
Citing the negative impact the US' sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" affecting more than 180 countries and regions around the world has on global trade and economic growth, the IMF has downgraded its global growth forecast from 3.3 percent to 2.8 percent for 2025 on Tuesday.
While the US tariffs have become a single dominating topic for the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings, US' tariffs are seen as "putting more pressure on developing country debt burdens," according to Reuters.
Last Wednesday, the WTO has forecast that global trade will fall this year because of US tariffs. The WTO previously expected global goods trade to expand by 2.7 percent in 2025 but it now forecasts it will fall by 0.2 percent.
On the same day, the UN trade and development body, UNCTAD, released its own report which forecasts global growth to slow to 2.3 percent in 2025 due to escalating trade tensions and uncertainty. The projection was below "the 2.5 percent threshold widely viewed as signaling a global recession," the trade body said in a press release.
Since the US rolled out the "reciprocal tariffs" regardless of global opposition in early April, more countries have spoken out against the US levy, and many of the world's least developed countries were among them.
Heartbreaking absurdity
What is even more shocking is that not long ago, while the US defied world opinion by imposing sweeping tariffs on all major trade partners, it also extended its so-called baseline tariff of 10 percent to Haiti, one of the world's least developed countries as defined by the UN. Geng Shuang, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, criticized the US tariff at an UN meeting on Monday.
"This display of unilateralism, protectionism, and economic bullying is not just aimed at the so-called competitors like China. It has also inflicted damage on a nation teetering on the edge of collapse, such as a fragile country like Haiti ... This is not only cruel and absurd, but also profoundly heartbreaking," Geng said.
Also in one of the latest development, US trade officials finalized steep tariff levels on most solar cells from Southeast Asia with products from Cambodia expected to face duties of more than 3,500 percent, Reuters reported on Monday.
Global media outlets have also reported on the impending impact of the US tariffs on poorer countries.
Lesotho, which US President Donald Trump described in March as a country "nobody has ever heard of," is one of the world's poorest nations, and it will be facing a 50 percent tariff, one of the highest levies on the US list of target economies, according to a Reuters report on April 3.
"47 out of 54 African countries have been placed under higher US tariffs. The immediate direct effects of the tariffs on African countries will be a significant reduction in exports and foreign exchange availability. This will send other shock waves through African economies," the African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina said in a statement on April 12.
The US government has grown accustomed to scapegoating other nations for its domestic woes, but such tactics fail to address its own structural issues, prominent Chinese economist Justin Yifu Lin said on Monday, warning that the escalation of irrational tariff policies will ultimately harm not only US consumers and businesses but also the global economy.
The approach of slapping heavy tariffs and forcing smaller economies to concede through coercive negotiations ignores the deeply interconnected nature of global trade, and will hurt the US itself, leading to lose-lose outcomes, Lin told the Global Times at an economic seminar on Monday.
In the face of unilateralism and protectionism, no country can remain unaffected, China's Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on Monday.
"Once international trade reverts to the law of the jungle, where the strong prey on the weak, all countries will suffer," the statement read.
The US deliberately ignores the actual development situations of many developing countries, distorts the reasons behind trade deficits, and arbitrarily imposes unilateral tariffs, which amounts to depriving these countries, especially those in the Global South, of their rights to development, according to a Chinese analyst.
"The US tariff measures not only set back overall global economic growth but pose grave developmental obstacles for the least developed countries as its high tariffs effectively cut these countries off from the international division of labor and international trade," Zhang Jianping, deputy director of the academic committee at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told the Global Times on Tuesday. "The US is intentionally overlooking and ignoring the development rights of the least developed countries."
Zhang said even a 10-percent baseline tariff could greatly hinder the competitiveness of the exports of a country, and affect the economy and jobs behind the products.
The high US tariffs have caused some of the world's exporters to look to China, which has had a zero-tariff policy with 43 least-developed countries, or LDCs, since December last year.
Last week, Bolivian President Luis Arce praised the export of 25 tons of chia seeds from the Latin American country to China as "a historic milestone," describing China as a new market with huge potential and a large population, Prensa Latina reported.
He stated that there is no limit on the volume of chia seed exports to China and noted that this could help redirect exports currently destined for the US, where a 10 percent tariff has been imposed, adding that the export of sesame and other products is also being managed. A local business representative said the trade with China is generating more jobs and investment, according to the report.
Chorus of opposition continues
The IMF also announced on Tuesday to downgrade US growth rate to 1.8 percent for 2025, 0.9 percentage down from its last forecast in January.
Over the weekend, the implementation of US tariffs further sparked domestic opposition as the negative impacts become more evident, with American scholars and economists calling for people to "reject harmful tariff policies," with multiple sectors already buckling under the strain.
Over 1,400 people, including dozens of the world's top economists, have signed an "anti-tariff declaration" criticizing the tariff policy adopted by the Trump administration as "misguided" while warning of a potential "self-inflicted recession" as of press time Tuesday, according to the Xinhua News Agency citing media reports.
The letter, signed by renowned economists including Nobel laureates James Heckman and Vernon Smith, was circulated over the weekend. "The American economy is a global economy that uses nearly two thirds of its imports as inputs for domestic production and the US trade deficits are not evidence of US economic decline or of unfair trade practices abroad. Nor do these 'deficits' inflict damage on the US economy," the letter read.
Trump met with representatives from major US retailers, including Walmart, Home Depot and Target on Monday to discuss how broad-based tariffs will likely raise the cost of everyday goods that they import, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
Most of these retailers import heavily from China. Walmart shares are up less than 2 percent in 2025, while the others have all posted double-digit losses. Target has been hit hardest, down 32 percent so far this year, according to Reuters.
US markets sold off on Monday, while the benchmark 10-year Treasury note and the US dollar also came under pressure to near three-year low, Reuters reported.
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