New generation of African chocolatiers gets hobbled by US tariffs

DAKAR, Senegal — Dana Mroueh, a small-business owner in Ivory Coast, was negotiating to introduce her organic chocolate bars into stores in New York and Washington when President Donald Trump announced new tariffs on all U.S. imports last week.

Ivory Coast is the world’s biggest cocoa producer, and the United States is the world’s largest consumer of chocolate, though most of it comes from Canada and Mexico.

Mroueh wants more chocolate from Africa to break into the American market. Her company, Mon Choco, is part of a new generation of West African chocolatiers striving to create jobs and wealth at home by transforming raw cocoa beans into processed delicacies. “We were hoping to start exporting within the next few weeks,” she said.

Now she fears the Trump administration’s war on tariffs will badly hurt her business. On Wednesday, the president said he would pause his reciprocal tariffs for most countries for the next 90 days. The tariffs, should they go into effect, are expected to hobble several African economies that had long seen in the United States a welcoming market.

It is not just cocoa. Car parts from South Africa and apparel from Madagascar will also be hit, and Lesotho, the southern African nation that provides denim used in jeans, is poised to bear some of the highest levies, at 50%.

“We’re definitely going to face some issues,” Mroueh said.

The tariffs come as African nations are still reeling from the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The agency, which provided crucial foreign aid on the continent for more than six decades, was gutted shortly after Trump took office in January.