US President Donald Trump’s administration supports a one-year extension of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, the trade initiative with sub-Saharan Africa that expires on Tuesday, according to a White House official.
Since coming to office in January, the administration had not publicly stated a position on the act, known as Agoa, a law first passed in 2000 to provide duty-free access to the US market for thousands of products.
Despite broad bipartisan support for renewing Agoa, which supporters say helps diversify US supply chains and counter Chinese influence in Africa, the law’s prospects for extension before it lapses are deeply uncertain.
Its only realistic legislative path is to be attached to the stopgap funding bill Republicans are pushing to keep the US government open past Tuesday, although it could also be reinstated later.
African governments and investors have been lobbying in recent weeks for a one- or two-year extension after efforts to secure a longer-term renewal did not make it to a vote in the US congress.
Agoa is credited with supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs in more than 30 eligible countries.
It is regarded as crucial to South Africa’s automotive manufacturing industry, helping local plants keep export volumes and margins up. For most countries without a free-trade deal, the US’s most-favoured-nation rate is 2.5% on passenger cars and 25% on light trucks — a tariff load that can erase thin assembly-line margins and redirect sourcing to other countries.
Jobs on the line
Automotive products have been the single biggest South African beneficiary, accounting for about 64% of Agoa-linked exports to the US in 2024, according to industry and trade reporting based on data from industry association Naamsa.
Jobs are directly on the line. Vehicle manufacturers employ more than 30 000 people. Sustained US access therefore supports not only assembly plants but also the component value chain that feeds them. Ending it would compress automotive industry margins overnight and complicate future model allocations to South African plants.
Read: South Africa in talks with Chinese car makers to boost local production
Its impact has, however, already been diluted by the bilateral tariffs Trump introduced in August, which exposed products once exported duty-free under Agoa to US import taxes of between 10% and 30%. — Aaron Ross, (c) 2025 Reuters, with additional reporting (c) 2025 NewsCentral Media
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