South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Monday that the country must prepare for its potential exclusion from the United States’ duty-free trade initiative, AGOA, as relations between Washington and Pretoria have soured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) gives eligible African countries duty-free access to the US market for thousands of products. South Africa has benefited from it for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
President Donald Trump’s administration has cracked down on South Africa for what Trump claims is its persecution of white people. South Africa’s government says this is a falsehood spread by fringe groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ramaphosa said it remained to be seen whether South Africa would remain part of AGOA, and his government was in discussions with US counterparts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some US officials have suggested South Africa should be excluded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I need, as president, to prepare us if it ever happens,” Ramaphosa said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said the impact on jobs would be “devastating” and he and Deputy President Paul Mashatile have been travelling around the world to explore alternative markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ramaphosa cited a recent trade agreement with China as a positive step. China introduced a zero-tariff scheme for qualifying South African goods in May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cyril Ramaphosa says South Africa must prepare for the loss of AGOA access.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":867848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"posted","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"2112438933468430553","_sma_facebook_post_id":"191437357620492_2243036679850064","_sma_instagram_post_id":"18053931074592199","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[18336],"class_list":["post-880476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-agoa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880476","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\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=880476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":880478,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880476\/revisions\/880478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/867848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}