July 17, 2025

The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) condemns the July 9 unilateral 20 percent tariff imposed by the United States on imports from the Philippines as an act of economic coercion which will harm the poorest Filipinos the most.

“This unilateral punitive tariff is an act of coercion and humiliation against the Filipino people,” said ICHRP Chairperson Peter Murphy. “This naked bullying is the economic mirror image of the US action in turning the Philippines into a massive military base for war with China. There is zero respect for the basic right to self-determination of the Filipino people.”

While the 20 percent tariff is part of a global Trump attack on almost all trading partners, the US military concentration on the Philippines is part of a tighter US Indo-Pacific Strategy, aimed at assembling all possible military allies alongside US forces for a major war with China in the near future.

The tariffs are bargaining chips in Trump’s punishment of any country which has a trade surplus with the US or has tariffs on imports from the US. Trump is clearly willing to bargain with his target countries to gain access to more minerals, and to remove or reduce tariffs on US products, as he has achieved with Indonesia.

All Philippine elites since 1946, including the Marcos Jr. administration, have facilitated US demands for unfair economic treatment. Trump stands out for the brutality of his approach and the crude terms he wants to impose. No more talk of “free trade” of “development” or “partnership”, just “I want a deal”.

With an August 1 deadline looming, the Marcos Jr. administration could theoretically “do a deal” to cut the tariff back to the minimum 10 per cent rate by making other concessions to Trump. But what would be the cost?

Duterte’s Rice Tariffication Act demonstrated the danger of removing protections for Philippine industries. Both Duterte and Marcos promised to reduce the price of rice to 20 pesos (US$0.35) per kilogram, but even with massive rice imports the price ranges from 33 to 60 pesos per kilo, depending on quality. The daily minimum wage in Metro Manila is now just 695 pesos (US$12.14), having increased by a paltry 50 pesos on July 1. Rice farmers have been hit hard, and the situation for the people buying rice has become far worse. Masses of Filipinos are hungry.

In 2024, the US trade deficit with the Philippines was just $5.29 billion. This is a tiny blip for the US, whose Gross Domestic Product in 2024 was just over $29,000 billion. And since US corporations dominate the export processing zones from which much of the product is exported to the US, the US profits from either a trade deficit or a trade surplus.

Trump’s trade policy is driven by anti-democratic 18th century theories of empire trade, which are really obsolete because in today’s empires investment and finance are supreme. The US already massively dominates in global investment and finance. Trump’s policies hurt poor and working class people everywhere, smashing corporate supply chains and sharply increasing the cost of all goods imported into the US. His policies can be defeated.

ICHRP stands with Filipino peasants and farmers, and the Filipino people at large whose already poor standard of living is under real threat, and whose long-disregarded political and economic autonomy are being openly derided by Trump.

The answer is not more traditional “free trade” deals with other Global North countries – which have already damaged the livelihoods of Filipino farmers and workers.

The answer is international solidarity with farmers and workers everywhere, including in the US, in common struggles to elevate wages for workers and livelihoods for farmers, to stop the attacks on migrant workers in the US and Europe, to stop the attacks on Filipinos across the world, to enable balanced industrialization in all countries, and to shut down the Indo-Pacific military build-up to war with China.

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