Inside the fractured Trumpian White House, techno-elitists, self-described philosopher kings and the world’s richest man are all proffering competing ideological and economic visions to US President Donald Trump. And they have learnt, as the rest of the world has, that despite whatever leverage and influence they possess, he is going to go his own way.
Inside this peculiar constellation of thinkers and powerbrokers, as Trump launched one of the most apparently ill-considered tariffs in recent memory, is a set of competing personalities with divergent visions. Each has some – but never complete – influence over the president’s foreign and economic policy. Understanding them helps explain how this trade war came to pass – and why no one, not even its architects, fully controls it.
Pre-eminent – though perhaps not for long – is Elon Musk, who has made it clear that minimal government interference and the protection of his state-driven wealth are paramount. As head of the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency, he’s cut through the US federal government like a kid in a candy store – paring down social initiatives, boasting about massive cost savings and issuing harsh rhetoric against US adversaries and indeed his country of origin.
That is, until his own actions and Trump’s tariffs caused the stock price of his beloved Tesla to fall through the floor, at which point a more moderate tone took hold.
Always ready to back the fastest horse, Musk – once beloved of the Democratic Party for his apparently extraterrestrial humanist imaginings for Mars and his clean-energy PR around Tesla during the Obama years – pivoted hard towards a right-leaning “free speech” and hyper-individualist narrative when it became apparent that Trump was ascendant, and rode those coat-tails all the way to a cot bed in the White House.
Next is another scion of South Africa and the then South West Africa – Peter Thiel, a technocrat and the US’s largest defence contractor, who believes that democratic ideals are no longer sustainable, that higher education from institutions at which he studied is overrated and that the government should be a streamlined engine of venture-backed capital. Thiel’s ideas are not entirely his own. For many years he has been a devotee of a quieter, but far more insidious figure: Curtis Yarvin.
Yarvin, a blue blood from Brooklyn, posited a theory of governance that is explicitly antidemocratic and anti-equality – the intellectual foundation of what’s now known as the neo-reactionary movement in the US. Small government, and the belief that commitments to justice and equality damage the social order, underpin his philosophy. He has been deeply influential to the coterie surrounding Trump. Indeed, he watched Trump’s election victory alongside Thiel at Thiel’s residence.
Last, but not least, is Stephen Miran – the chair of the Trump administration’s Council of Economic Advisers. Late last year he published a 41-page policy paper titled A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System, which argues for placing “American industry on fairer ground vis-à-vis the rest of the world”, using tools such as tariffs to achieve this.
And into this vortex of ideology and opinion steps Trump, who, despite receiving all these inputs, tends to make decisions on his own.
The answer, as South Africa and the rest of the world are discovering, is that logic is a luxury, predictability a myth – and the tariff, once a dull bureaucratic tool, is now a weapon of chaos.
America first, Americans last
Trump’s tariffs were pitched to the American people as a patriotic salve – a way to reshore jobs and punish freeloading trading partners – even though the US economy has been consumer-based for decades.
The real-world effects have been far more surgical in their harm than in their benefit. Supply chains in the US have been disrupted, prices have risen, and the inflation Trump claims to abhor has been further aggravated.
US manufacturers reliant on imported parts – from semiconductors to raw aluminium – have had to absorb cost spikes or pass them on to consumers.
Agricultural exporters, particularly soya bean and corn producers, have seen retaliatory tariffs lock them out of key markets. Multinationals with cross-border footprints now face regulatory fragmentation, and investor confidence has flagged, particularly in equity and bond markets.
As economist Dawie Roodt succinctly told Daily Maverick: “In order to maintain the dollar’s reserve status, the Americans must keep importing more than they export. If you disrupt that, you could undermine the dollar.” And, by extension, American dominance.
“America First” has translated into Americans footing the bill, but the narrative surrounding it seems to matter more than the reality.
Even Trump’s closest ideological allies are nervous. Thiel’s venture ecosystem depends on predictable global finance. Musk’s empire – from Tesla to Starlink – relies on transnational supply chains and low-cost inputs, as well as China as a market. Neither can afford policy made on impulse.
Miran’s theory of tariff-as-taxation might hold in spreadsheets, but the real-world damage is being absorbed by the very domestic consumer his model claims to protect – again, because America itself is not a manufacturing- and production-based economy in the global marketplace.
Shipping delayed, consequences not
Although Trump’s war was launched with China in his sights, allies such as South Africa have landed in the blast radius. The blanket 10% tariff in effect nullified the benefits of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) completely. Some products now face potential duties upwards of 30%, placing SA alongside more overt geopolitical adversaries in terms of treatment.
Citrus shipments will have been rerouted or cancelled, and steel containers sit idle at US ports awaiting new declarations. Wine exports, particularly from the Western Cape, are being forced to consider new markets to offload in one of the most productive seasons in years. The automotive sector, already grappling with global shocks, now faces further disincentive to export into a suddenly hostile regulatory regime.
The rand, which briefly stabilised after the 90-day pause was announced, has since resumed its volatile dance, trading as much on political rumour as on fundamentals. Private sector confidence is shaken. Public sector leverage is rising. Inflationary pressures are mounting.
Agoa and the BRICS dilemma
Agoa, due to expire in September 2025, now looks increasingly unlikely to survive. In Washington, officials speak vaguely about “reciprocity” and “alignment” as prerequisites for renewal. No such requirements existed when Agoa was designed, nor are these alignments being specified – they are being retrofitted without clarity.
Read more: ‘Agoa is dead’ — hard-hit Africa braces for full impact of Trump’s trade tariff tantrum
In the same breath, South Africa’s BRICS affiliations are cited as reasons for discontent, along with neutrality on the Ukraine war, participation in Russian naval exercises and refusal to condemn China’s trade practices. It all appears to add up, in Washington’s view, to ideological betrayal.
This has meant that for the rest of the world, tariffs are no longer economic tools; they are loyalty tests.
“Many underestimated this,” Jee-A van der Linde, senior economist at Oxford Economics, told Daily Maverick. “I think people were blindsided – just like they were with the USAID cuts. Whatever you think of the Trump administration, when they act, they slice. They move.”
For South Africa, the implications are grim. Ejected from the “trusted partner” list, but not fully committed to the BRICS-alternative trade order, it finds itself strategically unmoored – adrift between fading favour and uncertain new alliances.
South Africa as the talking point
South Africa’s image problem in Washington is not solely based on our foreign policy, but also on its domestic challenges and talking points being a trigger point for the Trumpian base in the US, as well as the many SA-linked persons in Trump’s orbit.
AfriForum, Steve Hofmeyr, notable social media personalities and segments of the US conservative ecosystem pushed the idea of a “white genocide” in South Africa, pointing to farm murders as evidence. This was amplified by Tucker Carlson and ultimately echoed in a 2018 Trump tweet calling for an investigation into the “large-scale killing of farmers”.
That single tweet, seen by tens of millions, transformed a fringe narrative into a foreign policy talking point that has catalysed the Trumpian base in the US and seen South Africa in the US news constantly.
Musk, too, has entered the fray, weaponising his South African ties to cast BEE policies as discriminatory, and regulatory friction with Starlink as racially motivated. These claims, unfounded or misrepresented, feed directly into American perceptions of South Africa as unstable or unfriendly to innovation, and a constant talking point for so many influential persons in the US.
Read more: Donald Trump, Elon Musk and AfriForum – an unholy trinity pushing back on land reform
The politics of perception trump the politics of principle.
Yarvin sees democracy as a failed experiment, plainly stating his desire for a monarchy of capital. Thiel believes in an elite technocracy that wields power with surgical efficiency – a new oligarchy controlled by Silicon Valley types, founders and engineers as the only ones bright enough to guide humanity into the future. Musk wants deregulated markets and minimal public interference – so long as his empire remains protected. Miran wishes to reshape the global economic order to bend itself towards a new American primacy, and is willing to use a hammer to bend it so.
As Izak Odendaal of Old Mutual Wealth told Daily Maverick: “Trump is still Trump. And I think they’re learning that as fast as the rest of the world.
“I don’t think there’s a grand strategy here. There’s just no coherence.”
Although Trump appears to have been perceived as amenable, his actions have largely offered none of these results, as evidenced by the off-the-cuff tariff calculations and his willingness to pause the implementation of most of them once he realised the impact on the US bond market – a language he understands.
Tariffs have exposed the fault lines in Trump’s White House, and the populist vessel cannot contain the visions of the elites surrounding him. As these contradictions continue, it’s the entire world bearing both the real cost and the price of an increasingly uncertain future.
Adapt or absorb: SA’s crossroads
South Africa now faces a fundamental choice: try to appease a partner that no longer negotiates in good faith, or pivot towards an economic architecture that offers no guarantees and is largely undeveloped.
Already, government officials are engaged in EU trade discussions, BRICS bloc negotiations and African Continental Free Trade Area frameworks. But none offers the access or ease of Agoa.
Multinationals such as BMW, Volkswagen and Ford, which have invested billions in South African assembly and export operations, are caught in the middle. Their export calculus was built around Agoa. Now they face tough decisions on whether to double down or divest.
The Reserve Bank continues to monitor forex volatility, and the Treasury is eyeing budget adjustments in response to trade shocks. Exporters are scrambling to diversify markets. At this stage, it doesn’t seem as though anyone is considering that Agoa is likely to be renewed.
South Africa’s challenge in dealing with the sporadic implementation of US foreign and economic policy is a question much of the world is having to grapple with: how to survive in a world where US-led global trade is now mood-based, not rule-based.
There are no easy answers, but South Africa’s next steps will serve as a cautionary tale for others – across Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia – navigating the same hostile terrain.
There appears to be no real Trump doctrine – just reflex, contradiction and applause chasing. Yarvin wants absolute power for elites, Thiel wants to re-engineer the state, Musk wants to deregulate everything that doesn’t touch his margins and for people around the world to like him again, and Miran wants a pre-eminent US state without apparently knowing how to achieve it.
No one really appears to know what Donald Trump wants.
If the White House is a stage, then the global economy is a prop, and global partners – South Africa included – are stuck paying for tickets to a show they didn’t want to see in the first place.
It will, however, leave everyone measurably poorer. DM
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This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
