SA’s best shot for salvaging US relations is ‘a reciprocal trade deal replacing Agoa’

11 Mar 2025

When one considers the toxic attitude towards South Africa in Washington, negotiating any sort of trade deal with the US seems like a long shot.

South Africa’s only hope of salvaging something from its wrecked relationship with the United States is a six-month phase-out of its participation in the Agoa preferential trade deal to allow it time to negotiate a reciprocal trade deal.

This is what Washington insiders are saying after an extraordinary, sustained assault on South Africa by the Trump administration which has cut off all aid to this country because of the Expropriation Act, and its dislike of SA’s foreign policy positions, mainly on Gaza, Israel and Iran.

The Trump team has not yet pronounced on whether South Africa will be excluded when the whole Agoa – African Growth and Opportunity Act – programme comes up for renewal this year. But SA’s participation was already doubtful because of its foreign policy positions even before Trump was elected, and everything now points towards SA being removed from the programme – if the programme itself is renewed at all.

Even President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya has acknowledged this, telling The New York Times that South Africa expects that Trump will terminate SA’s Agoa participation.

‘Relationship reset’

Instead, he said the government had decided to offer a renegotiated trade deal with the United States. This could lead to a thaw, also in other areas, such as the Expropriation Act.

“When you take a step back and you put the emotions aside, you realise there’s an opportunity here to reset the relationship,” Magwenya said. “There is enough substance from a trade point of view for us to be able to do that.”

He said that one option under consideration was to increase cooperation between the two countries on gas, with the United States getting more access to gas exploration in South Africa and South Africa sourcing more of its gas from America. The proposal also would include a plan for what South Africa would consider fair tariffs, he told The New York Times.

Meanwhile in Parliament, President Ramaphosa said that “the US is now in a milieu of being very transactional; they would like to see what transaction can be crafted with any country that they interact with. And that process is under way through our various departments and in time I’ll be able to send the envoys that should go. And they will be going under the rubric of advancing our foreign policy.”

When one considers the very toxic attitude towards SA in Washington, negotiating any sort of trade deal with the US seems like a long shot. But Daily Maverick understands that SA’s only hope is for some form of short-term extension of its Agoa benefits – which boost exports by about $4-billion a year – to provide time for it to negotiate either a conventional two-way free trade deal, or some form of strategic investment framework. The US has such a framework with Kenya, which offers facilitation of trade and investment, but not free trade.

Special envoys

Magwenya meanwhile also told Newzroom Afrika that the timing was not right for the despatch of a mission of special envoys to the US to try to repair relations with the Trump administration. Ramaphosa announced this in his State of the Nation Address last month.

But Magwenya said that it was too early as there were still vacancies in key positions in the Trump administration dealing with Africa and SA – and also, SA did not want to engage in “megaphone diplomacy”.

Ramaphosa told Parliament that it was still his intention to send envoys not only to the US, but to other places. He said there was no reason to send envoys to Europe as EU leaders would be in South Africa for a summit with SA on Thursday, 13 March.

He said SA would continue to engage with Africa through the African Union and joint sessions of regional communities.

DA foreign policy spokesperson Emma Powell has just returned from a mission to Washington where she explored whether there was a pathway to repairing relations and de-escalating bilateral tensions. She did not sound very optimistic on her return.

“All that I can tell you is that the situation is actually a lot more concerning than most people realise,” she told Daily Maverick, adding that attitudes were hardening on both sides.

She was of the view that there were few clear pathways towards the immediate stabilisation of the relationship with South Africa until there was a complete overhaul of SA’s race-based legislation, including an amendment to the Expropriation Act, and minorities were given legal protections.

The DA’s efforts to persuade interlocutors that South Africa could deal with the Expropriation Act itself through the courts did not seem to meet the urgency requirements of the Trump administration, which seemed to want immediate and targeted action.

The DA envoy met a wide range of key players, including senior advisers to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Republican chairs on the foreign affairs committee and Africa sub-committees on the House side, and ranking Democrats and senior legislative directors on the same committees at the Senate.

Powell also met the Hudson Institute think tank, which has become increasingly influential during the Trump presidency, and a variety of other meetings with influential Maga-aligned figures.

Rift – the major causes

She said it was clear that the Expropriation Act, farm murders, race-based legislation and foreign policy contentions were the major causes of the breakdown in relations.

She said that the DA frequently insisted to the officials and legislators it met that the Expropriation Act did not amount to arbitrary state-sponsored land grabs at present, and that farm murders, although a major crisis on which the DA had developed a watching brief and a rural safety plan, were not part of a targeted political campaign, but rather more broadly indicative of the crime crisis in South Africa.

Aside from making immediate amendments to the Expropriation Act, Powell said she believed the Trump administration would demand the withdrawal of South Africa's case against Israel before the International Criminal Court before normalising relations.

She said the ANC’s meetings with Iran were an open provocation to the US. Last week the ANC met an Iranian delegation led by its ambassador to SA, Mansour Shakib Mehr, to discuss “strategic cooperation”, according to a tweet from ANC deputy secretary-general Nomvula Mokonyane.

This came as the International Atomic Energy Agency expressed new concerns that Iran may be pursuing a programme to construct nuclear weapons.

Yet SA’s trade with Iran is insignificant – amounting to little more than R300-million per year, compared with the close to $4-billion in exports South Africa ships to the US under the preferential market access terms of Agoa, Powell said. DM

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‘Relationship reset’

Special envoys

Rift – the major causes