As per the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC), 89% of South African exports to the United States in 2025 entered under ordinary trade terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Approximately 10% entered under AGOA, down from 28% in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AGOA exports were valued at approximately US$1.7 billion in 2025, down from US$4 billion in 2024, representing only about 1% of South Africa\u2019s total global exports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The key point on AGOA is that it removes one chunk of preferential access, but access to the US market remains,” Attard Montalto said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He added that the US market is fast-growing and wants not just South Africa\u2019s goods, but also its services, and that companies can keep looking for opportunities without a leg up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But even with a minimal impact on South Africa as a whole, Attard Montalto described the DTIC’s messaging around AGOA as “problematic”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said that the department’s messaging has tried to suggest that the loss of AGOA was a “negotiating disagreement”, and that it was the US trade representative\u2019s fault for not negotiating clearly on set terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Yet the trade representative was never negotiating over this exit; it was a wider administration choice based on punitive accounts of South Africa\u2019s broad policy platform, including its foreign policy stance,” the analyst said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Framing it as a deal that slipped away lets the department off the hook and leaves business unprepared for what comes next,” he said, warning that further punitive measures were coming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Attard Montalto added that the government has also repeatedly made out as if it were actively engaging with the United States to manage AGOA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, “these efforts were limited, often at junior to mid-ranking level and not where decisions are actually made<\/strong>,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “In any case, there was never any real prospect of South Africa avoiding…the loss of AGOA preferential access,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is because the foundational policy concerns raised by the United States\u2014such as BEE reform\u2014were never seriously on the table. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While some reforms are taking place, they would also never be enough to satisfy the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Put those domestic choices together with a US administration that laid out its view of South Africa early in its term, and this moment was close to inevitable,” Attard Montalto said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even as many look to the numbers to downplay the impact of losing AGOA, others are focused on those the loss will actually affect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aluma Capital Chief Economist Frederick Mitchell said that being removed from the programme will mean South Africa loses a competitive edge in niche exports and puts thousands of jobs at risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the job losses have also been said to be ‘overstated’, any job losses in a country where unemployment sits at crisis levels of 33.6% should not be easily dismissed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The loss of preferential treatment directly exposes our most labour-intensive and high-value sectors,” Mitchell said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These include automotive manufacturing in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng; citrus, table grapes, and deciduous fruit farming in the Western Cape; and advanced metallurgy and agro-processing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Overnight, local exporters will face prohibitive import tariffs, radically eroding margins and pricing South African goods out of the world\u2019s largest consumer market,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The blow also comes at a time when South Africa’s domestic industries are “under intense siege” from a massive wave of cheap Chinese imports. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Influxes of heavily subsidised vehicles, industrial machinery, textiles, and electronics, amounting to an estimated R165 billion competitive threat, are squeezing local producers out of their home market,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “South African manufacturers, burdened by high local electricity costs, municipal logistics failures, and rigid regulatory frameworks, are now fighting a two-front war: losing duty-free Western export markets abroad while being hollowed out by Asian competition at home.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The result is rapid de-industrialisation, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The economist said that the South African government cannot afford to “sleepwalk” through the crisis, and needs to put ideology aside to stand with South Africans at large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said a high-level diplomatic and business delegation should be sent to Washington to deal with the issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Negotiate pragmatic bilateral trade solutions, address mutual security and policy concerns, and preserve preferential US market access,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Ideological victories will offer zero comfort to the hundreds of thousands of South African families who stand to lose their breadwinners to the harsh reality of factory closures.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While economists and analysts are split over the actual impact and urgency of South Africa losing access to the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), the outcome is far from a surprise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":783106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"failed","_sma_x_autopost_error":"Instagram publishing failed: Instagram returned HTTP 400: Media ID is not available","_sma_x_post_id":"2119752874158649445","_sma_facebook_post_id":"191437357620492_2266849494135449","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[18336],"class_list":["post-883375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-opinion","tag-agoa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883375","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=883375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":883378,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883375\/revisions\/883378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}An own-goal reckoning<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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