The “break” of 90 days for the youngest high US tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump is only a weak consolation for the countries in the south of Africa. Their economies are confronted with the collapse of a trade agreement with preferred treatment and the US customs for car deliveries of 25 percent. “Mauritius, Madagascar, Lesotho, South Africa will be particularly affected,” said Alex Vines from the Chatham House think tank of the AFP news agency. “Textual exports are massively impaired and the 25 percent customs on auto exports are very problematic for South Africa.” The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade agreement granted some African products to duty-free access to the US market. Some sectors were able to develop successfully, for example, seven large car manufacturers in South Africa were able to export to the United States without surcharges. The citrus industry and the textile manufacturers, especially the jeans factories in Lesotho, also benefited from the AGOA agreement. These economic sectors now expect that they will suffer from ten percent from ten percent on imports to the United States. Trump put this into force, even if he suspended much higher surcharges for many countries for 90 days. Washington has not officially lifted the AGOA agreement for which a review is due in September. But there is “no clarity” about the status of the agreement, said Vines from Chatham House. Madagascar Minister of Commerce, David Ralambofiringa, said that he assumes that Agoa was “valid until further notice”. His South African counterpart Parks Tau, on the other hand, said that the base custom of ten percent essentially raised the AGOA advantages. For cars produced in South Africa, the USA is the third largest market. According to the NAAMSA industry association, 25,000 vehicles are delivered every year. Around 86,000 jobs in the auto industry hung directly on the AGOA agreement, said Naamsa. Occupied the supplier, there are 125,000 jobs. With the far -reaching effects of tariffs on global industry, it is unlikely that South Africa can open up an alternative market for themselves, said Vines. This would be devastating for the country, since it already suffers from an exceptionally high unemployment of 32 percent. Analyst Richard Morrow from the Brenthurst Foundation thought factory said even more stronger. The textile industry of the African small state has long been praised as a “success story” of the AGOA agreement. There is no buffer for them: Lesotho is “one of these small economies that have almost exclusively rely on Agoa to maintain their economy”. The clothing and textile industry contribute up to ten percent to the gross national income of Lesotho’s Lesothos. This was used by the US government to calculate the “reciprocal” tariffs that have now been paused by Trump – so that for Lesotho there was 50 percent surcharge and thus the highest sentence for a single nation in this category. The country could lose 40,000 jobs when the AGOA agreement was terminated, Lesotho’s King Letsie III said of the AFP in the past month. Botsuana, South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe, all of whom are delivering citrus fruits for export to the USA, were occupied by Trump with high tariffs. “If the reciprocal tariffs are applied”, “35,000 jobs are threatened in South Africa alone,” said the head of the citrus assistant association CGA, Boitshoko Ntshabele.
