Trumps Retaliates Thailand for Banning Farming Chemicals by Suspending Trade Preferences

On Friday, October 25, 2019, the U.S. President Donald Trump had suspended duty-free trade with Thailand due to the poor control of worker rights.

International reporter asserted that Trump had written a letter to the U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, stating that he had suspended duty-free treatment of certain Thai products because the country lacks protection for worker rights.

The USTR said that the banning from Trump could affect $1.3 billion (39 billion baht) in trade preferences for Thailand under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program.

Moreover, the eligibility of all Thai seafood products will also be revoked due to “longstanding worker rights issues in the seafood and shipping industries,” the office said.

Some analysts suspected that this could be the retaliation from the U.S. after Thai had just banned three farming chemicals – paraquat, glyphosate and chlorpyrifos – when there was a report showing documents from the U.S. requesting Thailand to delay the ban as it could have negativity on the U.S. export of soybean, wheat, coffee, apples, grapes and other agricultural produce worth 51 billion baht p.a.

The suspension will go into effect in six months, which will be on April 25, 2020.

More importantly, the ban could have a huge effect on Thai exports as data shown a shrink of 1.39% in September and a decline of 2.11% for nine-month period.