US removes South Africa and Rwanda from African trade preference program

The United States is removing South Africa and Rwanda from a two-decade-old trade program that gives dozens of African countries duty-free access to the American market, the Trump administration announced on Monday, deepening a rupture in relations that has been building for most of this year. The decision, confirmed by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, takes effect on January 1, 2027.

The move affects the African Growth and Opportunity Act, known as AGOA, which was signed into law under President Bill Clinton in 2000 and has since been renewed repeatedly with broad bipartisan support. More than 30 sub-Saharan African countries currently benefit from it, and eligibility is reassessed every year. South Africa and Rwanda now join a short list of countries pushed out under the current administration's tightened standards, following earlier removals of Burkina Faso, Gabon and Niger over coups, and Uganda over an anti-gay law, during the Biden presidency.

Washington's case against two governments

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said both countries had failed to meet AGOA's eligibility criteria, citing in general terms "barriers that undermine American trade and investment" and a lack of alignment with U.S. foreign policy interests. According to the official eligibility criteria USTR applies each year, beneficiary countries must be moving toward a market economy and the rule of law, reducing poverty, protecting human rights, and not undermining U.S. foreign policy. Rwanda was singled out additionally on human rights, political pluralism and workers' rights, while South Africa was faulted over corruption.

Greer did not detail the specific trade barriers he had in mind, but he said the administration was working with both governments to help them meet the criteria so they could eventually be reinstated. The decision follows years of USTR statements that AGOA should, as Greer put it in a February statement marking the program's reauthorization, "demand more" of its trading partners, and his office has since solicited public comment on modernizing the program to make it more reciprocal.

A relationship that had already soured

For South Africa, the exclusion is the culmination of a year of friction with Washington. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused the government of President Cyril Ramaphosa's African National Congress of discriminating against white citizens through affirmative-action and land policy, and has objected to Pretoria's criticism of Israel's conduct in Gaza and its continuing ties with Iran. Those grievances have translated into concrete diplomatic costs: last week Washington excluded South Africa from a Group of 20 foreign ministers' meeting held in Atlanta, a snub that foreshadowed Monday's announcement. The U.S. ambassador to South Africa, Brent Bozell III, wrote on social media that the AGOA suspension was "a predictable and preventable outcome" of Pretoria's refusal to make the policy changes Washington had requested.

Rwanda's removal has a more immediate trigger. Washington last week sanctioned the Rwandan defense ministry and a state-linked financial institution over its military's alleged support for the M23 rebel group fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, following an earlier round of sanctions on the Rwandan armed forces and senior officers in March. Kigali has consistently denied backing M23, and officials in Rwanda had not issued a formal response to the AGOA decision by Monday evening.

What is at stake

South Africa is by far AGOA's largest beneficiary and the only G20 economy on the eligibility list. Its trade minister, Parks Tau, said South Africa's exporters ship roughly 1,800 categories of goods duty-free to the United States under the program, on top of thousands more covered by a separate preference scheme, and that total two-way trade between the countries reached $28.8 billion in 2025. The Associated Press, which first reported the removal from Johannesburg, put South Africa's AGOA-linked exports — chiefly automotive parts, citrus and wine — at roughly $1.7 billion a year. More than 600 American companies operate in South Africa, Tau said, supporting about 134,600 jobs and over $5 billion in investment commitments in the past year alone, including in critical minerals the U.S. considers strategically important.

South African economists and trade unions have offered a wide range of estimates for how many local jobs are tied, directly or indirectly, to AGOA access — from roughly 125,000 to as many as 576,000, according to figures cited in South African business reporting ahead of the decision. Losing AGOA would add an estimated 3.4 percent tariff on top of the 12.5 percent duties South African exporters already face, a smaller shock than some had feared but one still expected to weigh on automakers, citrus growers and the Western Cape's wine industry, all of which lean heavily on the U.S. market.

"We are ready, whatever the decision," Tau told reporters ahead of the announcement, adding that the government had tabled "practical proposals through the proper channels" and expected the economy to remain stable regardless of the outcome.

Reaction, and a narrow path back

South Africa's government had been bracing for the move for weeks. Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola said last month the country was preparing for a "worst-case scenario" but would not "surrender its sovereignty" to American demands, which have included dropping affirmative-action requirements on U.S. businesses and repealing a land-expropriation law. The government denies its policies are anti-white. Solidarity, an Afrikaner-aligned trade union that has lobbied Washington directly on the issue, has warned that as many as a quarter-million jobs could be affected and pressed for talks to resume quickly.

In Washington, the decision drew criticism from across the aisle. Representative Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, warned the removal could disrupt the U.S. economy as well and called on the administration to spell out clearly how South Africa could be reinstated.

Under the program's rules, reinstatement remains possible if a country's eligibility is restored in a future annual review, and Tau has said South Africa will have a 60-day window to address any remaining U.S. concerns before a full or partial suspension would actually take hold. In the meantime, Pretoria says it is accelerating efforts to diversify its export markets toward the European Union, the African Continental Free Trade Area and Asia, a hedge against a trade relationship with Washington that, for now, is ending rather than merely narrowing.