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WTO: Okonjo-Iweala warns against ‘catastrophic’ tit-for-tat tariffs

World Trade Organization chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala urged nations Thursday to keep calm over tariffs, warning that a tit-for-tat trade war would be “catastrophic” for the world economy.

Okonjo-Iweala issued her appeal during a panel discussion on tariffs at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in a week that saw US President Donald Trump threaten tariffs against China, the European Union, Mexico and Canada.

She recalled the fallout from the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in the United States during the Great Depression in 1930, which prompted retaliation and worsened the global economic crisis at the time.

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“We are very much saying to our members at the WTO: you have other avenues. Even if a tariff is levied, please keep calm, don’t wake up and without the necessary groundwork levy your own,” she said.

“If we have tit-for-tat retaliation, whether it’s 25 percent tariffs, 60 percent, and we go to where we were in the 1930s, we are going to see double-digit global GDP losses, double-digit. That’s catastrophic.”

 

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Update: In 2025, Nigerians have been approved to earn US Dollars as salary while living in Nigeria.


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