US warns EA against ban on ‘mitumba’

Dar es Salaam. Tanzania and other East African nations planning to stop the importation of used clothes may face retaliatory measures from the US.

Mr Harry Sullivan, the acting head of the Economic and Regional Affairs unit in the US State Department’s Africa Bureau, told Business Daily that Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda had until next week’s meeting of their leaders, at the joint EAC Heads of State Retreat on Infrastructure and Health Financing and Development in Kampala, to reverse the decision or face the penalties.

The leaders are expected to decide whether they will move ahead with the ban on importation of used clothing from the US or walk back on the decision. The US sees any such decision as a move to stifle free trade.

“I believe the results of the meeting next week will determine how we proceed,” Mr Sullivan said in a conference call with reporters.

East African Community (EAC) member states agreed two years ago to impose a phased ban on imports of used clothing (known as mitumba) over a three-year period beginning 2019.

Kenya subsequently withdrew from that agreement following US threats to end its eligibility for duty-free clothing exports to the US market under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa).

US trade officials have maintained that the ban on mitumba violates an Agoa stipulation requiring beneficiary countries to eliminate barriers to trade with the US.

Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda — each of which earns far less through Agoa than Kenya — jointly affirmed last July that they intended to proceed with the mitumba ban. The three countries argued that the action was essential to their efforts to develop domestic clothing manufacturing industries.

The Trump administration disputes that reasoning.

“While we understand the East African Community’s desire to build a domestic textile sector, we firmly believe the EAC ban on imports of used clothing will not achieve that,” Mr Sullivan told reporters.

Making inexpensive mitumba unavailable will adversely affect many people in the three countries, he suggested. For Kenya, loss of the Agoa duty-free allowance would prove devastating to its budding apparel industry that earned the country more than $400 million worth of textiles and clothing exports to the US last year.

“Leaders or the EAC are saying to consumers of used clothing “we are going to take this choice away from you and you will not have access to this market anymore,”” he said, adding: “We question whether consumers of used clothing will be able to afford the new apparel being made in the East African Community market.”

A more effective way of developing domestic clothing industries would entail encouraging middle-class consumers to buy locally made apparel, Mr Sullivan proposed. An East African fashion industry could “build its brand and market to the growing middle class, which prefers to buy its apparel in shopping malls and other places anyway,” he argued.