Lesotho scrambled to put together a delegation on Friday to head to Washington to engage with the United States on tariffs that risk wiping out nearly half of its exports, its trade minister said, in what could be a death blow to its economy.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s steep new tariffs target Lesotho, a tiny African nation he once mocked as a country “nobody has ever heard of.” The move threatens vital trade benefits, risking thousands of jobs and unraveling decades of U.

Lesotho is in a desperate scramble to mitigate the devastating impact of newly imposed US tariffs, which threaten to obliterate nearly half of the nation’s exports, primarily its vital textile industry.

In a sunlit shack on the outskirts of Lesotho's capital Maseru, 34-year-old Lieketseng Lucia Tjatji sits under a black cloth pegged to a tin wall and emblazoned with the head

Lesotho, which Trump described in March as a country "nobody has ever heard of", is one of the world's poorest nations with a gross domestic product of just over $2 billion

Lesotho said Thursday it will send a government delegation to the United States to plead its case after Washington imposed 50% tariffs on its imports, the highest for a single nation.