President of Colombia Abelardo de la Espriella appealed to the American leader Donald Trump with a request to suspend duties on Colombian goods while the country liquidates the consequences of the devastating earthquake. He wrote about this in X.
De la Espriella said that he asked for this "in order to at least slightly alleviate the situation of our entrepreneurs who are going through very difficult times due to the consequences of the earthquake."
The Colombian leader said that he talked with Trump for ten minutes. He expressed his condolences.
At the end of July, US duties on many Colombian goods increased from 10 to 12.5%.
An earthquake of magnitude 7.4 occurred in Colombia on August 10, it became the second strongest in the last century. According to the National Agency for Disaster Risk Management of Colombia, as of Saturday morning local time, the death toll was 294 people.
The earthquake caused significant damage to the western part of Colombia, particularly affecting remote and hard-to-reach settlements. 320 people are still missing.
According to the authorities, as a result of the earthquake, the epicenter of which was in In San Jose del Palmar (Choco Department), 3,935 people have been injured at the moment, and the total number of residents affected by the disaster has exceeded 115 thousand. Powerful tremors destroyed 14 thousand houses and damaged another 81,506.