Cosatu warns that the loss of US trade preferences could threaten South African jobs and calls for urgent government support, export diversification and further negotiations before the change takes effect on 1 January 2027. PICTURE: IOL
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) notes with deep concern the United States (US) government’s removal of South Africa from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).
AGOA has provided lower tariff access for African exports to the US market, currently the world’s largest economy. It has boosted South African and many other African countries’ exports to the US.
It has helped nurture intra-African trade. South African vehicle exports to the US, for example, include many components made in neighbouring states.
It has benefited the US too, not only with the supply of African goods, including critical minerals, but it has also helped create an estimated 200,000 direct jobs in the US.
The US, like all other nations, has the right to determine which goods can enter its market and at what tariff level. Other African countries have previously been removed from AGOA, and some were later reinstated. We state that plainly because this debate must be based on facts, not fiction.
But facts also demand honesty about what is at stake.
Cosatu is deeply concerned by the impact South Africa’s exit from AGOA, due to take effect from January 2027, will have on thousands of agricultural and manufacturing jobs linked to it.
We have already seen many jobs lost due to massive hike in tariffs by the US since 2025 upon companies in Cape Town, Atlantis, Malmesbury and Tulbagh, amongst others. We have seen the devastation it threatens to these workers and farmers’ ability to take care of their families.
These are not statistics. They are mothers and fathers wondering how they will pay rent, buy food and pay school fees. They are workers who have given decades to a factory or a farm, only to be told that a decision taken in Washington has now made their jobs unviable.
Given South Africa’s already dangerously high 43.8% unemployment rate and weak economic growth, we cannot treat this as just another trade dispute. It further compounds an already dire jobs crisis.
That is why it is important that South Africa’s government utilise the next 60 days before this exit comes into effect, to negotiate a favourable set of solutions to avert this potential blow to the South African economy and jobs.
These engagements must be anchored upon mutual respect, including the recognition and appreciation of South Africa as a constitutional democracy and a sovereign member of the international community.
Negotiations for South Africa’s continued membership of AGOA and a reset of bilateral relations with the US, must be based upon what is in the interests of South Africa’s people and a respect for our non-negotiable transformation journey.
We will not apologise for seeking to correct the injustices of apartheid. We will not apologise for land reform, for employment equity, for seeking to build an economy that works for the majority and not just a privileged few. Transformation is not anti-American. It is pro-South African. Any sustainable partnership must respect that.
At the same time, we must prepare for the worst while we negotiate for the best.
It is critical that the Departments of Trade, Industry and Competition; Employment and Labour; National Treasury; and Agriculture put in place an urgent package of support for at-risk workers, companies, industries and communities.
This must include subsidies and incentives, tax rebates and holidays, and support from the Unemployment Insurance Fund’s Temporary Employment Relief Scheme. We cannot afford to abandon a single worker, business, industry or community.
Support cannot come after retrenchments. It must come now, before factories close, before farms dismiss workers, before towns lose their economic lifelines. TERS was designed for moments like this: to keep workers paid and employed whilst companies navigate a shock. It must be deployed quickly, transparently and without bureaucratic delay.
Efforts to boost and diversify South African exports to other markets from Canada to Brazil, from Europe to Asia, and most importantly across the African continent must be accelerated and provided with the necessary support from the state and the private sector.
We have for too long been over-dependent on a single market. The African Continental Free Trade Area must become a lived reality for our manufacturers, farmers and workers.
We must also be honest about who helped bring us to this point.
It is long overdue that AfriForum, Solidarity and other proponents of the white persecution myths appreciate the very real damage that their endless lobbying of and antics in the US have done to bilateral relations.
Cosatu is convinced that South Africa’s removal from AGOA is in no small part a direct result of AfriForum et al’s tireless efforts to decampaign South Africa. For years, they have travelled to Washington peddling a false story that white South Africans are being persecuted, that farms are being seized without compensation, that South Africa is a failed, anti-white state.
That story is false. But it has consequences.
They must now explain to white farmers from the vineyards of the Cape to the citrus farms in Limpopo; to White, Coloured, Indian and African workers from the clothing factories in Cape Town to the motor manufacturing plants in the Eastern Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal why their livelihoods will now be lost.
Cosatu believes this is AfriForum, Solidarity et al’s legacy. It is time that they own it.
Cosatu will continue to work closely with government and industry to ensure these interventions take place, as well as to work closely with the US labour movement to protect workers’ jobs. American workers did not ask for this either. The 200,000 US jobs supported by AGOA are also at risk.
South Africa is a resilient nation. It has overcome some of humanity’s darkest moments. We will navigate these turbulent times too.
But resilience is not just about enduring. It is about acting. Let us use the next 60 days wisely. Let us fight for every job, factory, farm, and community.
No worker must be abandoned.
Mike Madala Shingange is the president of Cosatu.
**The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Media Group.