Scorned Trump boots Rwanda, South Africa from trade deal

Last week, the Trump administration announced that, beginning January 1, South Africa and Rwanda will stop receiving preferential trade access to the U.S. market through the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). This decision comes down to issues that have little to do with the act itself, nor even really with trade between the United States and these countries. Rather, in both cases, their removal from AGOA serves as an act of retribution from a president unhappy with their governments’ policies on domestic or regional issues. But American interests themselves will suffer, as consumers will be forced to pay higher prices for the same goods.The preferential trade agreement — originally signed into law in 2000 by President Bill Clinton and most recently renewed in September for two additional years — provides duty-free access for over 7,000 goods to the U.S. market for qualifying sub-Saharan countries. In exchange for this preferential access, AGOA requires countries to meet a set of vague requirements, including reducing barriers to American exporters, ensuring governance and human rights standards, and not posing a threat to U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. The U.S. president has unilateral authority to designate a country ineligible for AGOA benefits under these standards. Trump appears to be using this broad power to punish countries for unrelated grievances.Trump has had South Africa in his crosshairs since taking office in January 2025. Just weeks after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order on February 7 freezing all American aid to South Africa and promoting the resettlement of white Afrikaners to the United States as “refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.” Without presenting any credible evidence, Trump has accused the South African government of failing to stop widespread racial violence by black South Africans against the country’s white, Afrikaner population. He has also called out the South African government’s policy of redistributing property to Black South Africans, who have a far lower land ownership rate than the country’s white population. The breakdown in relations appeared to hit a fever-pitch in May 2025, when Trump engaged in a verbal spat with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in an Oval Office meeting in front of media personnel broadcasting the exchange to the world.Tensions have continued ever since. Last November the Trump administration refused to send personnel to the G20 meetings in South Africa, and the administration announced that South African officials won’t be invited to this year’s G20 in Miami. In ending South Africa’s AGOA eligibility, the president risks harming American trade interests. The increased tariff rates facing South African exporters to the U.S. mean that South African firms will look for other destinations where they can export more cheaply, thus limiting the supply of goods U.S. consumers have access to. For those goods that will continue to enter the American market, higher tariffs (which are paid by the American importer) will likely be passed on to consumers, who’ll be forced to pay higher prices for the same goods.As for Rwanda, the small central African country has been one of the United States’ closest partners on the continent for decades. Rwandan president Paul Kagame has opened up his country to investment from a number of American firms, including iconic sports organizations like the NBA, which has formed sponsorship deals with Rwanda’s tourism brand and agreed to play non-NBA professional basketball games there.But relations have become tense over the course of Trump’s presidency. The American president is unhappy with Rwanda’s continued support of the M23 rebel group in the eastern Congo in a proxy war that has been ongoing since the 1990s.In June 2025, the Trump administration brought together the foreign ministers of both the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda to sign a peace agreement to end the conflict. In exchange, the United States received preferential access to the region’s minerals in a deal codified last December. But in the year since, violence has continued to ravage the Congo’s east, and evidence points to Rwanda’s continued support for the M23. Military personnel affiliated with the Rwandan Defense Force have also been fighting alongside rebel groups in DRC territory. Rwanda’s continued involvement in the war has deeply frustrated Trump, who sees the continued violence in the region as a hit to his claim that he has successfully ended the war. Of course, the Rwandan government has indeed committed well-documented human rights abuses and has taken action against political pluralism, such as unjustly jailing political opposition figures. But credible reports of Rwandan human rights abuses aren’t new, and the Trump administration waited until now — as Rwanda doubles down on its interference in U.S. peace efforts in the region — to fully remove the country from AGOA eligibility. The evidence indeed appears quite clear that Trump’s frustration with Rwanda’s military policy in eastern Congo is the primary cause for its removal. In the end, the decision to remove Rwanda from AGOA for issues that have nothing to do with trade gives reason for other sub-Saharan countries to question America’s reliability as a trade partner. Perhaps their country will be Trump’s next target. Without established trust, African companies are likely to seek alternative markets in partner countries committed to maintaining preferential trade terms. As the U.S. is quibbling with sub-Saharan partners over issues that have nothing to do with trade, China has removed all tariffs on 53 of the continent's 54 countries.Trump’s decision to remove both countries for reasons that have little to do with AGOA itself speaks to the need to make a long-term version of this act (which hopefully get renewed before it expires at the end of 2028) that is more concentrated on trade itself and less on vague standards that are hard to measure and almost impossible to define.