Ecuador will raise tariffs on Colombian imports from 50% to 100% starting next May 1, in a new escalation of the trade war between both countries initiated by the Ecuadorian president, Daniel Noboa, with the aim of pressuring Colombia to reinforce security on the border to combat drug trafficking and organized crime.
The Ministry of Production, Foreign Trade and Investment announced this Thursday in a statement that the “security rate” imposed on Colombia by the Noboa Administration will be raised “after verifying the lack of implementation of concrete and effective measures regarding border security by Colombia.”
“This measure is based on national security criteria and seeks to reinforce co-responsibility in a task that must be assumed jointly to confront the presence of drug trafficking on the border,” the letter continued.
The trade war between Colombia and Ecuador, two countries with a long and solid commercial relationship, began with the imposition of 30% tariffs from February 1, which were subsequently raised to 50% from March 1.
In recent years, trade was around 2.8 billion dollars, with a negative balance for Ecuador of around 900 million.
The tariff escalation was accompanied by other reciprocal sanctions in energy matters.
Colombia cut off the electrical interconnection with Ecuador, which needs the supply of Colombian electricity when it has a generation deficit to meet internal demand.
Ecuador responded with an increase from 3 to 30 dollars in the price per barrel of the Colombian state-owned Ecopetrol’s oil transportation through the pipelines operated by the Ecuadorian state-owned Petroecuador.
This announcement comes days after the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, assured that the former Correísta vice president Jorge Glas was a “political prisoner”, statements that Noboa classified as an “attack against sovereignty”, which is why he called the Ecuadorian ambassador in Bogotá for consultations.
“political prisoner”
“Now that they are trying to reinvent the ‘political prisoner’, I want to be emphatic: this constitutes an attack against our sovereignty and a violation of the principle of non-intervention, enshrined in Article 19 of the OAS Charter and in international law,” Noboa published on his X account.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador, Gabriela Sommerfeld, announced this Wednesday that the technical tables between both countries scheduled for next week had been “suspended” until “a favorable environment and good will is found” for dialogue.
Glas is being held in the maximum security prison of El Encuentro, with which Noboa seeks to replicate in Ecuador the prison model implemented in El Salvador by Nayib Bukele, where he is serving an eight-year prison sentence for bribery and illicit association and another 13 years for embezzlement of public funds.
The former vice president was recaptured two years ago, when Noboa ordered an assault on the Mexican Embassy in Quito after the Mexican Government had granted him diplomatic asylum, considering him a political prisoner.
