La Jornada: Two NGOs are blamed in Chile for causing US tariffs

“I really find it a disloyalty and a lack of patriotism with the country, tremendous and a lack of knowledge of all agricultural production processes, and salmon farming,” said the president of the National Agricultural Society (SNA), Antonio Walker.

He added that “in an agriculture as modern as ours, the fact that local NGOs do not recognize it is a lack of respect, a total lack of knowledge,” and, according to him, “there is something different behind it here, there is an ideology that hurts us a lot.”

While the president of the Salmon Council, Loreto Seguel, accused that “it is very easy to mix topics and generate misinformation that unfortunately greatly damages the image of the country,” and that the NGOs “only generated damage,” that the purpose “has been to lie to discredit that industry.”

The above refers to the Libera and Ecoceanos foundations, whose leaders spoke before the US Office of the Trade Representative (USTR) within the framework of an investigation into possible child labor in productive sectors.

The surtax excludes copper, Chile’s largest export to the United States, but affects salmon – the second most shipped product –, fruit, wine and wood derivatives. Despite this, of approximately 1,500 goods exported by Chile, 53.5 percent will continue to enter with zero tariffs, under a bilateral free trade agreement.

In 2025, the Andean nation’s exports to the United States totaled 17,741 million dollars, of which 9,412 million were mining goods.

The president of the Libera Foundation, Carolina Rudnick, denied that they were asking to apply tariffs to Chile, but insisted that forced child labor exists in the nation. “I imagine that it must have impressed many to know that this exists. It shocks, it impacts us all and it is difficult to believe. Talking about forced labor or modern slavery are heavy, monolithic things. But it is happening,” he said.

He added that, “as recorded in the minutes of the hearings before the USTR, my foundation and Ecoceanos, we requested that tariffs not be applied to Chile and that said decision be replaced by a plan of seven structural measures, which would allow us not only to address the demands of the White House – the prohibition of the import of goods made with forced labor – but also to strengthen the system of prevention and combating the use of subjected labor in Chile, which is nothing other than the imposition of working conditions. illegal acts through violence, intimidation, deception, abuse of power or vulnerability of the worker, and retaining him under duress.”

In August, a US delegation will arrive in Santiago to negotiate exempting some Chilean exports, the government reported. Washington announced tariffs of between 10 and 12.5 percent on imports from 60 economies that together represent up to 99 percent of its purchases.

He justified this in an investigation into “insufficient efforts to combat forced labor.”

In addition to Chile, the measure also affects Brazil, Mexico, India, Japan and the European Union.