Nigeria’s Economic Team To Meet Over Trump’s Tariffs
In a bid to navigate the turbulence and uncertainty in the global economy created by United States’ President, Donald Trump’s new tariffs on countries, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Economic Management Team (EMT) yesterday disclosed plan to appraise the various scenarios in the ongoing trade war and advise the federal government on the way forward.
The EMT may advise the federal government to consider adjusting the 2025 budget.
The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister, Mr. Wale Edun, disclosed this in Abuja, while reacting to the global trade war, adding that the federal government would appraise the various scenarios and options and advise the government accordingly.
This was as the naira in line with global trend since the announcement of additional tariffs by Trump, depreciated further yesterday, closing at N1,629 per dollar at the official Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM), a 1.81 per cent decline compared to N1,600/$1 on Friday, despite sustained interventions by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
On the parallel forex market segment, the naira also weakened to N1,565/$1, down from N1,550/$1. This represented a N15 depreciation in one day as demand pressure persisted across both the formal and informal markets.
Data from the NAFEM window showed that the naira traded between N1,590 and N1,655 per dollar on April 7, with a weighted average rate of N1,612.23/$1.
The fresh slide in the exchange rate came despite the CBN’s intervention of $197.71 million last Friday in a bid to calm volatility and ensure market liquidity.
But even though major stock markets tumbled yesterday owing to concerns over Trump’s global trade war, the US President insisted that he won’t pause the tariffs and threatened China with an extra 50 percent levy while suggesting he was open to negotiations with other countries
The Trump’s administration recently imposed various tariffs ranging between 10 per cent and 65 per cent on different countries across the world, including Nigeria which got a 14 per cent tariff on its exports to the United States.
However, fielding questions from journalists on the sidelines of the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI) Corporate Governance Forum, Edun noted that the US, which is at the centre of the tariff war, had on April 2, announced that it would exempt mineral exports, including oil.
