This woman does not read trade communiqués, but your face, and knows when you approach her stall and start calculating the price of tomatoes the way an accountant calculates tax.

She does not need an economic forecast to know that imported inputs are scarce; she only needs to hear the shopkeeper next door start selling cooking oil.

She can tell when shipping costs have jumped because her usual rice brand vanishes and is replaced with a new one that tastes strange but still costs more.

So when Egyptians start arguing about trade exchange on social media, it shows that trade policy has crossed over from ‘elite debate’ territory into ‘kitchen crisis’ reality. And once something affects the kitchen, the whole country feels it.

Now, the entire system feels stressed because trade rules, forex management, and consumer protection all form one chain. But citizens only get to see the last, which is the price tag.

The Central Bank might report improvements here and there, like a narrower current account deficit boosted by tourism and remittances, but the Suez Canal is still suffering from Red Sea disruptions, and households cannot eat macroeconomic data.

Even when inflation eases slightly, as Reuters reported with CAPMAS data showing a reduction from 25.5 percent to 24.1% in late 2024, the woman in Imbaba is still calculating portions like a mathematician because prices refuse to behave.

The problem begins when governments treat trade like a technical mystery that ordinary people should not question. But people feel the consequences long before they hear the explanations.

By the time the announcement drops, the damage is already in the shopping basket, as household accountability becomes emotional because the evidence is hidden, while the prices are not.

And then comes the mother of all African economic headaches: import dependence meeting currency stress, with citizens obsessed with imported goods; and their industries rely on imported inputs such as machinery, fertiliser, pharmaceuticals, packaging, and fuel.

When dollars disappear, so do supply chains, and businesses start pricing their goods as if they are preparing for an apocalypse.

So these trade arguments are never just about borders, as they are about who gets access to forex, whose goods enter the country faster, and who gets punished by scarcity.

They are also about which big players quietly enjoy the chaos of import monopolies, logistics cartels, and connected middlemen. Trade can grow and still leave households hungry if the benefits are captured at the top.

And if citizens cannot name the people responsible, there can be no accountability. Trade outcomes come from actual institutions, not some mystical ‘market energy’.

The Ministry of Trade decides the strategy; customs officers decide how fast goods move (and how much it costs to move them); the Central Bank sets the forex tone; parliament provides oversight (or pretends to); competition agencies are supposed to stop greed from becoming policy.

Also, trade policy touches rights in ways that do not need translation, with the right to food, work, and know why the price of medicine suddenly doubled among these rights.

When prices rise, households start cutting protein, skipping healthcare, withdrawing children from after-school classes, and reducing their movement. Women often absorb the shock first because they manage household budgets. People with disabilities are hit twice, scarcity and cost, while rural communities suffer penalties just for living far away.

So while the trending hashtag says ‘trade exchange’, the real questions Egyptians are asking are, ‘Which goods are embarrassing our wallets this month’?

If the government insists that trade policy is stabilising the economy, then citizens deserve proof that their daily lives are also stabilising. That means publishing monthly food basket trackers, medicine availability updates, port clearance times, job stats across sectors, and transparency on external shocks like canal revenues.

Citizens also have roles to play by turning arguments into evidence, tracking prices of essential goods weekly and sharing the patterns, not just their outrage.

You can demand explanations from trade and finance ministries not patriotic slogans. You can report informal charges at ports and pressure consumer protection bodies to investigate hoarding and collusion. Constituents can even push parliament to hold public hearings on how trade decisions affect households.

Meanwhile, government agencies have serious homework of publishing transparent scorecards, cleaning up customs processes, setting clear rules for forex access, and proving, not claiming, that households are being protected, not sacrificed, in the name of economic stability.