THE U S COMMITS AN UNFRIENDLY ACT TOWARD THE BAHAMAS

The United States government has imposed a 12.5 per cent tariff ( up from ten per cent imposed earlier) on exports from The Bahamas to their markets. They placed our country on a list of 60 countries that they say do not have laws that prohibit the import of goods made by forced labour. In the case of The Bahamas, they are wrong. The Bahamas has a provision in its constitution against involuntary servitude and it recently passed a law to specifically address that issue. The United States is the source of 90 per cent of our imports, so if there is a problem with forced labour, it seems to us that they ought to be looking at their own practices and not ours. It would be different if this were a real concern about forced alburm but it is not. This is just part of their ideological war against Cuba that is leading to the starvation of the Cuban people, described by one U S Congresswoman as collective punishment in violation of international law. This will adversely affect our fishing sector that exports some 70 million dollars of crawfish to US markets.