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In the past few months, the world has been talking about the tariffs imposed by the United States.
If we push aside the political debate and focus on what tariffs are and what they do, there is a parallel with the challenges the Global South has faced for decades.
Trump’s tariffs harm global trade in the same way that the West’s economic policies harm the Global South.
Whether you describe tariffs as taxes, fees or levies, they are roadblocks that stifle trade, and the financial system roadblock has been holding back Global South trade for decades.
The reason most entrepreneurs dislike tariffs is the same reason that I dislike the financial system – both discriminate against one party and give an advantage to another.
That discrimination is the reason I love crypto because it does not discriminate.
Many economists and business leaders dislike tariffs, stating a tariff war would likely bring higher prices for consumers, lower GDP, supply chain disruptions, job losses and in a worst-case scenario, the possibility of economic depression.
Every time governments get involved in business and trade, their policies create roadblocks to growth.
You can argue that some roadblocks are necessary, but every one of them is a roadblock to business – we just have to decide which ones, for reasons other than economics, are necessary.
The Global South version of tariffs is exclusion from education, opportunity and the financial system. The effect of exclusion is the same as the effect a tariff war has in the West.
The difference is that tariff wars last for only the time it takes for political leaders to come to their senses. In the Global South, exclusion has been the usual state of affairs for decades.
When businesses make it impossible for people in the Global South to comply with KYC (Know Your Customer) laws, they put up a roadblock.
A guy in Ghana, for example, can’t make a payment to a company overseas that makes the product he wants to buy.
A businessman in Nigeria can’t buy equipment because he can’t access the financial system in the country where the business that sells the equipment is located.
A Kenyan can’t accept money from an overseas customer because he can’t access the banking system in that country.
A Rwandan has to pay a huge fee just to receive the money her husband sends home from overseas.
Roadblocks all the way down the line. Crypto cuts through all of those roadblocks, and that’s why I moved to the Global South to advocate for crypto adoption – I know it can level the playing field.
Crypto busts through financial roadblocks
In the Global South, crypto cuts red tape, eliminates bureaucracy and gives people a tool to burst through the financial roadblocks that have held them back.
It is the antidote to an attitude that prefers one person over another simply because of the color of their passport or the size of their wallet.
Crypto doesn’t discriminate.
When I first started talking to people in Africa about crypto, they were amazed that they could use crypto to access the financial system just by taking a few simple steps online.
Some of them cried when they first realized how easy it was because they instantly knew their lives were about to change.
The roadblocks they had lived with their entire lives vanished.
The new challenge is to leverage the utility of crypto because it’s more than simply a tool to access the financial system.
Savvy young people all over the Global South are using crypto to set up businesses, established businesses are using crypto because it offers fast and cheap transactions and gift card traders are quitting their jobs because they can earn more money and have a better lifestyle if they devote more time trading on P2P (peer-to-peer) platforms.
People are using crypto to solve decades-old problems like making payments or remittances and then scaling their trade routes into business opportunities.
In Asia, Africa and Latin America – the places where access to the financial system and trade is more difficult – crypto adoption is exploding.
India has 90 million users. Over 20% of the population in Vietnam owns crypto, and adoption exceeds 40% among Nigerian adults.
For the true believers like me, the task is to educate the people in the Global South who cannot access the financial system and benefit from the opportunities that finance brings.
Trump can fix tariff roadblocks in the West by signing an executive order, but it’s not that simple in the Global South.
Africa, for example, has a young, tech-literate population that is growing faster than any other continent, but we need to show them what’s possible so they can see the opportunities.
Once we show them what crypto can do, they’ll hack it in ways we can’t imagine.
For more than a decade, crypto products have been helping improve the lives of the people in the Global South.
The irony that the West’s economists think tariffs are bad for economies is not lost on me because I’ve seen what their roadblocks have done to the Global South.
Now that crypto has started to tear down those roadblocks, the Global South has the chance to become a superpower.
The faster we get the word out, the sooner it will happen.
Ray Youssef is the founder of NoOnes, a P2P platform designed to expand financial freedom across emerging markets, and a former CEO of Paxful, one of the world’s largest P2P Bitcoin marketplaces. Ray has focused his career on building tools that empower underserved communities, particularly in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, making him a leading voice on how digital assets can transform access to money in the Global South.
