There have been reports emanating from our land-locked neighbours – Lesotho – that the United States plans to extend the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which gives the continent preferential access to US markets, by a year, after a trade delegation returned from a visit to Washington.

Led by Lesotho’s Minister of Trade, Industry and Business Development Mokhethi Shelile, a Lesotho trade delegation visited the US from 15 to 19 September and met US officials responsible for AGOA on the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee.

AGOA expired on 30 September and companies that benefit from it have warned that any delay in renewing it risked significant job losses and factory closures.

“They all agreed that AGOA has to be extended and they promised us that by November or December, at the latest, it will be extended by a year,” said Shelile at a press conference after returning from the US.

The visit by the Lesotho trade delegation was because of the tariffs that US President Donald Trump imposed on global trading partners on April 4 that have hit countries hard. They were widely seen as the death knell for the quarter-century-old AGOA deal, putting millions of livelihoods at risk. Lesotho initially got hit with the world’s highest tariff of 50% on Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” – ruinous for the tiny mountain kingdom’s export-led development model, which was almost entirely dependent on textile factories selling jeans and T-shirts to the US. Trump reduced the tariff to 15% in August.

While tiny Lesotho is doing something to help the country and its citizens, we in South Africa get a support desk, established by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (the dtic), which will serve as a direct point of contact for companies affected by the US tariff hikes. Big deal!

To many it looks as if the South African government as a whole, do not seem to be taking the threat of United States sanctions seriously. Add to the already imposed tariffs the possibility that South Africa may be hit by sanctions, including being kicked out of the SWIFT payment system, a move that will effectively isolate us from global finance. South Africa is on a knife’s-edge and risks permanently souring relations with the world’s most powerful country. And for little good reason.

Now, just to add insult to injury, the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) will be participating in wargames with China and Russia during the G20 summit. The timing, and the fact that we are still participating in military exercises with cold war enemies of the United States, sends a clear signal to the US that we do not care about repairing relations. This is on top of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s roasting by President Donald Trump in the White House where certain demands were given and nothing has been done about them, General Rudzani Maphwanya’s – Chief of the SANDF – support for Iran against the United States, and the government’s support for the countries that are involved in devasting war currently. All of which is in opposition to the US’s stance and many other examples that the US does not look upon favourably.

This is despite the 30% tariffs already resulting in tremendous volatility in the economy. Many jobs are at risk, especially affecting our agricultural and automotive industries. Tariffs only started in August 2025, so at the time of writing the full extent of the economic damage is yet to occur.

On top of this the local automotive OEM manufacturing industry is in turmoil because of all the cheap imports from China flooding the market.

This is not a political statement – it is the reality of the scenario in South Africa. Reduced competitiveness in the world’s most lucrative consumer economy will only serve to slow down our economic growth and export markets. We cannot afford the resultant job losses.

Bruce Crawford