U.S. Report Names Morocco a Key Hub for China's Global Trade Circumvention

A recent White House report has identified Morocco as a significant African hub for China's efforts to circumvent global tariffs, alongside Kenya. The U.S. report, issued by the Office of Manufacturing and Trade Policy, places Morocco within a bloc of "African hubs" that China is leveraging to bypass customs duties.

The report highlights Morocco's ports as strategically important global locations. These ports are being utilized for trade flows connected to China, facilitating the movement of goods through arrangements that form a global network for cargo transshipment. Morocco is classified in "Tier 3" of economies, which the report defines as smaller economies with lower absolute transshipment volumes but possessing specific strengths and weaknesses that make them attractive for trade diversion.

These advantages include low-cost labor, specialized assembly capabilities, preferential access to the U.S. market, and limited customs enforcement. According to the report, Chinese-linked exporters are drawn to Morocco and Kenya not for the largest dollar volumes, but for their specialized advantages, which allow for repackaging, simple assembly, or modification of origin documents to evade high tariffs.

The White House report estimates that illicit transshipment activities, which involve relabeling, repackaging, re-invoicing, or minor manufacturing to avoid tariffs, cost the U.S. tens of billions of dollars annually in lost customs revenue. These practices also displace hundreds of thousands of American jobs and reduce the GDP. To combat this, the U.S. administration plans to develop an intelligent monitoring system called "Detective Border," which will use AI to integrate shipping data, track containers, analyze corporate relationships, and verify the actual production capacities of factories in intermediary countries.