The US’ threat to raise its global baseline tariff from 10% to 15% is being viewed in the UAE less as a shock and more as a catalyst for faster strategic diversification, Amjad Naser, banking and finance consultant and investment and trade strategy advisor, tells EnterpriseAM. The shift could accelerate a move toward “Asia, Africa and intra-GCC trade, which is already taking place,” he said.

The Cepa shield: Economist and Khalij Economics Director Justin Alexander agrees, with both him and Naser expecting the UAE to rely more heavily on its comprehensive economic partnership agreements (Cepas) to strengthen its role in global value chains and mitigate the impact of trade uncertainty.

This 5% hike is also being dismissed by some as another instance of “TACO” (Trump Always Chickens Out), as MENA economist Hamzeh Al Gaaod tells us. The term refers to a pattern of aggressive tariff threats that are later walked back or delayed in response to market pressure. Al Gaaod noted that US firms are already pursuing litigation against their own government. And with the US Supreme Court discrediting some of Trump’s tariffs last year as illegal and the EU threatening to pull out of trade agreements, the 15% tariff may run out of steam before it fundamentally reshapes global trade flows, he added.

“The UAE is structurally positioned as a logistics, re-export, and value-added hub rather than a traditional export-driven manufacturing economy,” Naser said. On the other hand, some US companies could seek to establish manufacturing bases in the UAE “not necessarily to bypass tariffs, but to diversify production bases and access alternative growth markets,” he added.

Besides, the current state of play is unclear. We don’t know if the tariffs the US will collect — supposedly today — will be at the 10% or 15% rate.

It’s also not the first threat we’ve gotten: The US threatened earlier this year to impose a 25% tariff on Iran’s business partners, which would have hit the UAE particularly hard, though there seems to have been no follow-through on that yet.

Just like last year, the bigger impact could be indirect. The UAE’s direct export exposure to the tariff increase appears limited, Alexander tells us, with the main risks likely to be indirect. “Uncertainty in trade policy could harm the global economy in ways that reduce oil demand; higher inflation in the US from tariffs could keep interest rates in the UAE higher for longer; [and] a decline in US asset prices would also hurt UAE holdings in the US and reverberate more widely,” he said.

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