When she was campaigning for the wide support that led to her appointment as the director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on 1 March 2021, Dr Nkozi Okonjo-Iweala had promised to re-engineer what was looking like a docile institution lacking grip over dealings between countries with regards to things like tariff disputes, so here comes the chance to engage the newly-elected President of the United States of America Donald Trump’s threats over hiking up rates of any goods entering his country if the other side don’t play ball.

Three days into President Trump being sworn in alongside his deputy JD Vance, there had been comments coming from the U.S. commander-in-chief threatening very high treasury-funding tariffs would be imposed on partner countries should their business people turn down his invitation to come build plants and companies in America and that is what the former foreign minister of Nigeria Iweala thinks portends absolute catastrophe.

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Hawkish Donald Trump told a Davos, Switzerland 2025 World Economic Forum gathering – although a handful – through a virtual address on Thursday 23 January 2025 to come make your product in America and we will give you among the lowest taxes as any nation on earth.

If his audience refuses, which is your prerogative, Trump said, the consequence will be to pay a tariff — differing amounts — but a tariff, which will direct hundreds of billions of dollars and even trillions of dollars into our treasury to strengthen our economy and pay down debt under the Trump administration.

Following this line of thought would be his ideal position to counter the lack of new manufacturers in his country. With fresh investments come jobs and that is what the Trump 2.0 presidency wants to double up on as he had made a lot of promises during the campaign trail leading to his second coming.

Even if the 45^th and 47^th United States president wants to create more employment for all Americans, it should be through dialogue, meaning exploring all the mechanisms that the WTO had provided to resolve any conflict relating to trade between its 166 members, that is what the Nigerian Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala says should happen.

In case a trade war involving needless tariff-slamming sprees should happen, it would be at the detriment of everyone including the U.S., says the director-general while discussing retaliatory tariffs side-by-side with European Union Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis.

Okonjo-Iweala says that if we have tit-for-tat retaliation, whether it’s 25% tariff (or) 60% and we go to where we were in the 1930s we’re going to see double-digit global GDP losses. That’s catastrophic. Everyone will pay including Trump’s America, so hopefully, his declaration concerning raising import tariffs to balance the loss of manufacturing jobs is only a plot to renegotiate favourable trade terms.

But where the U.S. is losing manufacturers due to factors not necessarily related to their move to other locations, it is making up for it through digital service employment being created by tech companies turned multinationals based in Mr Trump’s country.

Embracing reglobalisation, a word that seems to be growing into a catchphrase at the 1995-founded World Trade Organisation is a potential way out of more squabbles.

With reglobalisation comes decongesting supplies chains deriving their value from one source as seen with Taiwan, South Korea and China making up 70 percent of the total manufacturing capacity of the world’s semi-conductor microchips needed to control and manage the flow of electric current in electronic equipment and devices.

At the 2025 World Economic Forum, Nigeria was represented by its Vice-President Kashim Shettima who addressed a “Forum Friends of AfCFTA: Turning Digital Trade into a Catalyst for Growth in Africa” discussion to mark the potential benefits to foreign investors bringing their money to his country.

Unless there is a specific exclusion of developing countries like Nigeria from future tariff wars, a thinking imagines that WTO members still growing their capacity will suffer greatly hence the need to internally collaborate and strike off trade barriers within the African continent is key.

Today, we have 220 million telecom subscribers and 163 million internet users in Nigeria alone. This provides us with immense opportunities to empower our people.

While our highest oil export earnings were $35 billion in 2011, India last year earned about $120 billion from outsourcing alone.

The African Continental Free Trade Area is not only an economic arrangement but a bold statement of our shared destiny.

Ayodele Johnson

Ayodelé is a Lagos-based journalist and the Content and Editorial Coordinator at Meiza. All around the megacity, I am steering diverse lifestyle magazine audiences with ingenious hacks and insights that spur fast, informed decisions in their busy lives.