{"id":873638,"date":"2026-09-03T14:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T12:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=873638"},"modified":"2026-09-03T14:28:44","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T12:28:44","slug":"united-states-officially-extends-agoa-for-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/873638\/united-states-officially-extends-agoa-for-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"United States officially extends AGOA for South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

US President Donald Trump has signed<\/strong><\/a> the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027, which extends the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) to December 2028.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The extension was amended and approved by the US Senate in early August<\/strong><\/a> and sent to the US House of Representatives on 1 September<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The laws were passed by a majority vote, presented to Trump on Wednesday (2 September), and signed into law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the laws covered a much larger funding package for the US government to avoid a shutdown, the AGOA extension was buried away among the amendments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The AGOA programme lapsed at the end of September 2025, but was retroactively extended at the start of the year to continue to the end of 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only change to AGOA in the new laws was the change of its end date from December 2026 to December 2028, effectively extending it by two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trade union Solidarity welcomed the extension, saying it will provide essential economic security for key industries across sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the union warned that South Africa’s continued eligibility for the programme is not guaranteed, citing an “ongoing debate” about whether it should remain included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There has been a push from certain US lawmakers to explicitly exclude South Africa from the programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two separate but similar bills have been introduced in the US Senate and the US House to do this, although neither has gained any traction since being tabled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both bills were introduced in 2025, explicitly calling for a review of the United States\u2019 relations with South Africa and for the country to be booted from the AGOA programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The list of eligible countries can be reviewed and changed before January 2027.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“South Africa\u2019s exclusion will have a devastating impact on important local industries, particularly the automotive and agricultural sectors, and will put thousands of specialised jobs at risk,” said Solidarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Approximately 22% of South African exports to the US benefit from AGOA, resulting in billions of dollars in trade. Estimates suggest that half a million South African jobs are dependent on the programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The union said it would continue to appeal to Washington to keep South Africa on the list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Economists have called on the South African government<\/strong><\/a> to put the country’s economic interests at the fore and work to repair its icy relationship with the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This would require the government to be more pragmatic with its trade diplomacy and de-escalate tensions with the United States to protect AGOA eligibility and find a path through US tariffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US President Donald Trump has signed the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027, which extends the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":848397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"posted","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"2095488243584180576","_sma_facebook_post_id":"191437357620492_2194721931348206","_sma_instagram_post_id":"18006495611968933","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[18336,10022],"class_list":["post-873638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-agoa","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873638"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":873654,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873638\/revisions\/873654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}