Anyone familiar with the trend in the last two years following the declaration of the real estate mogul, Donald Trump to run for US President, might be alarmed by the latest developments between the United States and Ghana.
While President Trump is at the moment focused on amending travel bans, scrapping pre-existing or on-going bilateral trade deals, or trying to replace Obamacare, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Vice President of African Affairs and President of the U.S.-Africa Business Center Scott Eisner later last week met Ghana’s President Nana Akufo Addo with what can be regarded as sheer hope for greater US investment in the Ghanaian economy.
Leading a business delegation which included the US Ambassador to Ghana – Mr. Robert Jackson and some US enterprise leaders on a courtesy call to President Akufo Addo, Mr. Eisner stated the intentions of the chamber of Commerce as well as the US government to partner with the administration to boost economic relations between both countries.
He noted that, “Ghana has proven its capacity to be a strong economic partner for American businessesâ€. Adding that a robust economic relationship benefits both countries “and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is committed to promoting commercial ties in Ghana and throughout Africaâ€.
However, it is only curious what could be the impact of such commitment in reality especially with a clear international trade policy direction of “America first†as captured in President Trump’s inaugural speech earlier this year.
Furthermore, we have witnessed the implementation of that policy in the constant reminder to all American businesses or companies with overseas presence to move their productions as well as operations in general back to the United States. Meanwhile, even countries who are part of ‘the Americas’ like Mexico would not be spared talk less of the Asian Giants like China and India both of whom have huge financial investments in the Ghanaian economy or much less, the Republic of Ghana itself.
Now there is a tendency for one to just dismiss such views as pessimistic but the realities are staggering: almost every US economic partner today is exploring ways to stay afloat on the occasion of a possible unfavorable ‘new rule’ that might be issued from the White House. Perhaps some kind of suspense looms around the globe each day as we watch the unfolding of the full agenda of a President Trump administration. Perhaps its time African countries start thinking of new ways of primarily boosting economic relations with each other before looking outside for investment partnerships, or how then can we justify the existence of AU, ECOWAS and the likes?
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