Among the African nations impacted, South Africa has been hit particularly hard by the new import tariffs.
The policy, aimed at addressing foreign tariffs, trade barriers, and currency manipulation, imposes a baseline 30% tariff on all South African exports to the U.S.
The idea behind these reciprocal tariffs is straightforward: if a country places high tariffs on U.S. goods, the U.S. will retaliate with equivalent tariffs on that country’s exports.
This move has drawn in responses from several countries including China which as recently as Friday, announced its own levies on US imports.
This figure matches the 34% tariffs against China that Trump announced on Wednesday. They come on top of 20% levies against the country since he took office in January, bringing the total to 54%.
South Africa in contrast has decided to look the other way, noting that such a move would be counterproductive, as reported by Bloomberg.
“There are all sorts of knee-jerk reactions to the announcements made” about the tariffs, Parks Tau, South Africa’s trade minister, told reporters on Friday.
“It’s a risky thing to do to simply decide that we’re now going to impose reciprocal tariffs. I think it is a race to the bottom.
We have in excess of 600 US companies that are in South Africa — we’re not going to wake up one day and say we want to target US companies, it would be counterproductive. “It’s not in our interest as a country and as an economy,” Tau added.
South Africa and the United States have not been on the best of terms since Trump took office.
“South Africa remains committed to a mutually beneficial trade relationship with the United States,” but punitive tariffs “are a concern and serve as a barrier of trade,” International Relations Minister Ronald Lamola said at Friday’s briefing.
South Africa vs Donald Trump
Shortly after assuming office, Trump condemned South Africa’s land reform policy, arguing that it violated property rights and posed risks to economic stability.
In response, the South African government defended the policy as constitutional and noted that it was aimed at correcting racial disparities in land ownership since apartheid’s end in 1994, emphasizing that no expropriations have occurred.
At the time, he had also halted all USAID, which affected several African countries.
Trump’s administration also cited South Africa’s stance on international issues—particularly its genocide accusation against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ)—as a contributing factor in the decision to suspend aid.
These incident led to an ugly altercation between the heads of states of both countries.
A few weeks later, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa stated that he wanted tensions with the U.S. to ease following Trump’s recent executive order but emphasized his long-term goal of visiting Washington to restore diplomatic ties.
“We don’t want to go and explain ourselves. We want to go and do a meaningful deal with the United States on a whole range of issues,” Ramaphosa said, adding that he was “positively inclined to promoting a good relationship with President Trump.”
