SOUTH AFRICA – The South African government has no immediate plans to retaliate against the United States over tariffs announced by President Donald Trump this week and will instead seek to negotiate exemptions and quota agreements, senior government officials said on Friday.
Trump imposed a 31 per cent tariff on US imports from South Africa on Wednesday, when he announced a 10 per cent baseline tariff on all imports and higher targeted duties on dozens of countries.
The United States is South Africa’s second-largest bilateral trading partner after China.
Africa’s most industrialised nation has said previously that it wants to agree a bilateral trade deal with Trump’s team. That looks to be a tall order, however, after the U.S. president’s repeated attacks on South Africa since his return to the White House in January.
“To say we will impose reciprocal tariffs without first understanding how the US arrived at 31 per cent … would be counterproductive,” trade minister Parks Tau told a press conference, saying South Africa’s average tariff on imports was 7.6 per cent.
Foreign affairs minister Ronald Lamola, meanwhile, said Trump’s tariffs effectively nullified the benefits African countries had enjoyed under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).
The AGOA initiative, which grants qualifying African nations duty-free access to the US market, is due to expire in September. And Trump’s far-reaching tariffs suggest that a renewal of the trade accord enacted in 2000 is now unlikely. (Reuters)
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