he report that the White House trade and manufacturing office released on August 13, The Great Transshipment Scam, places Morocco among more than forty countries it presents as the links of a “shadow network” of transshipment.
According to the document, signed by Peter Navarro, adviser to Donald Trump, Chinese goods would take on a local origin there to escape American customs duties.
Morocco appears in the third tier of the hierarchy, that of the “small, opportunistic targets,” placed alongside Kenya among the “African peripheral hubs”: port and free-zone way stations for selected China-linked flows.
The ranking carries no sanction, and the report itself concedes that these countries “do not move the largest dollar volumes.”
Yet Morocco has been bound to the United States by a free-trade agreement since 2006, the only one Washington holds on the African continent. It is that agreement, more than the volumes, that will set the price of the mention.
Photo: Bertrand Soubeyrand, CC BY-SA 4.0.
White House, Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy — “The Great Transshipment Scam: Rise, Scope, and Costs”, 13 August 2026.
