The attention of the Government of Guyana was drawn earlier today to an article published on 14 April 2025 on the BBC News website headlined “Was China the reason Guyana faced higher Trump tariff?” authored by one Gemma Handy who, it would appear, is a freelance journalist based in Antigua and Barbuda.
The author of the article poses the question “why had Guyana been facing a higher levy in the first place?” in connection with the reciprocal tariff announced recently by the US Government. Ostensibly to find her answer, the author identifies a single Guyanese person to speak on the matter, an anti-Government social-media personality who apparently is a professional beekeeper, anoints him as a political commentator, and proceeds to quote him extensively, including as saying “the planned high tariff showed Washington’s ire … the US is saying ‘if you want our protection you need to chase the Chinese out of your country’”.
The Government of Guyana wishes to draw Ms. Handy’s attention to a previous article published on 3 April 2025 also by the BBC News website under the headline “How were Donald Trump’s tariffs calculated?” in which a detailed explanation is provided on the methodology for calculating the reciprocal tariff. That article concluded that “if you unpick the formula above it boils down to simple maths: take the trade deficit for the US in goods with a particular country, divide that by the total goods imports from that country and then divide that number by two”.
The methodology for calculating the reciprocal tariff was also very helpfully published on the website of the US Trade Representative. Here again, it was very transparently indicated that the formula for determining the tariff applied to each country is based on the trade balance between the US and the country concerned, and that the formula does not include any variable to capture the relationship of the country concerned with any other country whatsoever.
The Government of Guyana considers that the baseless speculation contained in the aforementioned article by Gemma Handy is mischievous and irresponsible, it falls short of the BBC’s customary high standard of journalistic excellence, and it is particularly egregious given that the methodological basis for the tariff computation has been widely available in the public domain for weeks now and has been published by the BBC News website itself nearly two weeks ago.
Yours truly,
Department of Public Information
