The United States has punished Fiji, Vanuatu and tiny Nauru for running trade surpluses with the economic superpower, slapping them with duties far above its new 10-percent baseline.
“It’s just another reason to have less trust in the US, stacked on top of the US aid freeze,“ said Blake Johnson, senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank.
Among the Pacific countries' biggest sellers in the United States are the traditional narcotic kava drink, and spring water under the brand Fiji Water -- owned by Los Angeles-based The Wonderful Company.
Just suck them up'
Jonathan Naupa, owner of Vanuatu kava exporter Mount Kava, said demand for kava was high and he had no plans to cut prices for the US market.
He welcomed Trump's move.
“With the shortage of kava in Vanuatu, I don’t see prices going down, and I hope my fellow exporters also try to follow suit and not drop their prices.”
It faces a 30-percent US trade tariff.
'Unfair'
Trump's levy “is quite disproportionate and unfair”, Finance Minister Biman Prasad said in a statement.
Roland Rajah, director of the Indo-Pacific Development Centre at the Lowy Institute think tank, said the tariffs were based on the scale of US trade deficits with each country.
“It’s not necessarily driven by particular policy distortions,“ Rajah added, making it hard for countries to find a basis for trade talks with the United States.
Papua New Guinea, the most populous Pacific island country, said it had no plans to retaliate against the US decision to impose a 10-percent tariff.
“If the US market becomes more difficult due to this tariff, we will simply redirect our goods to markets where there is mutual respect and no artificial barriers.”
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