Donald Trump’s second presidency starting shortly presents a major challenge to SA

For a US president who is publicly threatening to take Greenland and Panama by military force – and also to annex Canada through crippling economic pressure – kicking South Africa out of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), or even trashing the whole programme, would clearly be small change. 

That is the wider context – of a tariff-wielding leader of the world’s greatest power exhibiting alarming Putinesque imperialist tendencies – that South Africa has to gauge as it tries to save its valuable preferential access to the US market under Agoa. It provides duty-free access to the lucrative US market for many exports of eligible sub-Saharan African countries – currently 32. 

South Africa has been under constant threat of suspension from Agoa for more than two years because its chumminess  with Russia, China and Iran – and its hostility towards Israel – have been deemed, mainly by Republicans, though also significant Democrats, to be a threat to US foreign policy and national security interests, which would violate eligibility for Agoa. 

The Biden administration fended off the attacks on South Africa and renewed South Africa’s Agoa eligibility in December, along with all the other 31 participants. But with Trump triumphantly returning to the White House next week all bets seem to be off. 

In 2023, South Africa exported $3.244-billion worth of goods to the US under Agoa’s duty-free access, including more than $2-billion in transportation equipment – mainly passenger vehicles and parts worth $1.926-billion – and agricultural goods valued at more than $400-million, including oranges ($59.8-million) and mandarins ($47.9-million). Agoa is considered particularly vital for the South African auto industry and for fruit and nut producers, so Pretoria has gone out of its way to avoid being expelled.

But the whole Agoa programme expires in September 2025. Proponents had hoped to pass legislation to renew it in the more sympathetic old Congress late in 2024. But they failed and now the whole programme faces an uncertain future under a White House and both houses of Congress all controlled by Republicans. 

Tenuous positions

Many Republicans support Agoa, which was launched in 2000 as a bipartisan initiative to constructively help African countries by stimulating production. But Trump hates free trade – let alone preferential, non-reciprocal access to the US market – and is threatening massive tariff hikes all round the globe. And it is not yet clear if the majority of Republicans in the new Congress support him on this or have the courage to express their opposition if they don’t.

South Africa’s continued eligibility is even more tenuous. It has so far survived several attacks from members of Congress who have demanded that its continued participation in Agoa and other aspects of its relationship with the US should be reviewed because of its foreign policy positions on Russia, China, Iran and Israel. The Pepfar programme –  which has provided South Africa with about $8-billion of UN money to fight HIV/Aids since 2003 – and other projects could also be imperilled, particularly since South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, whom Trump has appointed to slash government spending, has expressed disapproval of foreign aid.  

The Republican Party-controlled House of Representatives has over the past two years passed a resolution and legislation requiring a full review of US-South Africa relations. But until now a Democratic Party-controlled Senate has blocked them. Now with Republicans also in control of the Senate, as well as the White House, South Africa looks more vulnerable.

It probably doesn’t help South Africa’s case that one of its most vocal critics in Congress has just been elected as chair of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the new Congress.

It all seems to come down to the disposition of the Republicans in Congress and the whim of the White House occupant. 

A recent report by pro-Trump Fox News warned that “key Republicans are already pressing the incoming Trump administration to kick South Africa out of lucrative trade arrangements, should the South African government not change its position on Russia, China, Iran and Israel”.

These Republicans are complaining that “South Africa joins Russia’s military aircraft and naval vessels on exercises, allowing Pretoria’s naval bases to be used by the Kremlin and Russia’s sanctioned warships. Senior South African military officials have received training in Moscow. At the UN, South Africa has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

The article also noted an increasingly familiar complaint that the ANC is really sympathetic to Hamas – despite its official ties with the PLO – and also underlined what has probably most infuriated both parties in the US more than anything else: South Africa’s referral of Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2023 on charges of genocide in Gaza. 

It probably doesn’t help South Africa’s case that one of its most vocal critics in Congress, Republican senator Jim Risch of Idaho, has just been elected as chair of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the new Congress.

He told Fox News: “I remain concerned about South Africa’s efforts to cozy up to Russia, China and Iran, including Iran’s terror proxies, and the impact this has on US national security – a vital element in Agoa eligibility. The country’s foreign policy actions will remain a focus of my oversight efforts.”

A well-placed congressional Republican source confirmed to Daily Maverick that the Fox article “certainly reflects the general sentiment of the Republican Party. While many privately agree that removing South Africa’s Agoa eligibility is in neither of our best interests it is contingent on South Africa to engage with the Trump administration in a productive manner to ensure that the eligibility isn’t taken.”

He added that there remained “immense frustration towards South Africa” from many corners of both parties in Congress. 

Entreaties

The question though is whether the Trump administration and Congress will in fact be open to South Africa’s appeals not to scrap Agoa and perhaps other benefits.

Even before South Africa’s government of national unity was created after the May 2024 elections, the ANC government was lobbying the US hard to keep South Africa in Agoa. Those efforts doubled under the GNU and Trade and Industry Minister Parks Tau has been particularly active. Having the DA in government has also certainly helped to steady relations with Washington. 

Read more: Uncertain future: how a Trump presidency could reshape South Africa’s economic landscape

The GNU’s efforts to avoid antagonising South Africa’s influential US critics was apparent in a recent Daily Maverick interview with Ebrahim Rasool, who takes up his post as South Africa’s ambassador to the US on Monday, 12 January 2025. He was also ambassador to the US between 2010 and 2015 when Barack Obama was president. 

Read more: Time to mute ‘megaphone’ on Gaza — Ebrahim Rasool, SA’s new US ambassador

Asked how he would navigate the much choppier waters of a Trump administration, Rasool said he would put away South Africa’s “megaphone” on Gaza and just leave it to the ICJ to manage South Africa’s case as a “sub-judice” legal matter. He also said he believed Pretoria and Trump were basically “in alignment” on Russia’s war against Ukraine because both share a “healthy disrespect for Nato” and opposed the Biden administration’s imperative that Nato should “surround Russia”.

Some fear that South Africa’s fate does not in the end rest in its own hands but in the caprice of President Trump.

Rasool added that South Africa should stress the benefits of Agoa to the US, including oranges when these are out of season there and cheaper autos than those produced locally. 

But will such entreaties to keep South Africa in Agoa and more generally in America’s good books persuade the new powers in Washington?

Perhaps, though some fear that South Africa’s fate does not in the end rest in its own hands but in the caprice of President Trump and perhaps also in the willingness or otherwise of Republican members of Congress to defy him.

“More depends on the US Congress and Trump rather than South Africa,” said one close observer of the relationship. “Of course, South Africa has a role, and a big one, but I strongly disagree that the ball is all in South Africa’s court.

“There is a reason there was so much eagerness to try and pass Agoa before the new Congress came in,” this observer added. 

The active pro-Israel conservative lobby in the US has recently turned its guns on Rasool, suggesting that his call for the South African “megaphone” on Gaza to be muted is insincere and expedient. 

Rasool has generally been considered a proponent of moderate Islam and religious tolerance is the aim of his World for All Foundation. 

But in an article in November on the website of the conservative US think tank The Washington Outsider Center for Information Warfare the writer Irina Tsukerman said Rasool was really in favour of Muslim extremism, citing, among other things, his alleged admiration for the late Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, “a widely recognised ideological pillar of the Muslim Brotherhood… known for providing spiritual legitimation for terrorist groups such as Hamas.”

Tsukerman said that at a meeting in Doha in 2012, al-Qaradawi personally tasked Rasool with developing an Islamic jurisprudence  for Muslim minorities in societies they do not control. 

This led to the 2022 publication of the book Living Where We Don’t Make the Rules; a Guide for Muslim Minorities, which Rasool edited.  

Tsukerman writes that the book “operationalises many of al-Qaradawi’s directives”. Yet in the book Rasool reiterated his moderate Islam philosophy, writing that “Islam is founded on honour and dignity”, and so Muslims “must… stare down our own demons: the demons of extremism in our name: of misogyny when culture and patriarchy distort faith and sectarianism, when geopolitics shape the intra-Muslim discourse.”

Tsukerman also warned that some of Rasool’s tweets criticising Trump during his first presidency could jeopardise his lobbying efforts in Washington. 

But all that remains unclear.  

A Congressional Republican source told Daily Maverick that many people in the Washington establishment “have reasonably favourable impressions” of Rasool’s first tour as US ambassador, though he added that “some Republicans have taken note of his negative tweets about Trump from the first Trump administration”. DM