South Africa’s place in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), the United States programme that gives qualifying African exporters duty-free access to the American market, will be decided by Washington in the coming days, and the trade union Solidarity says the outcome could be announced as early as 1 November. No US decision had been published when this article was written on 30 October, and the exclusion Solidarity warns about has not happened. What exists is a pending annual review, a political row between Pretoria and Washington, and a set of job-loss estimates that disagree with each other.
What the US review process actually says
The legal basis for the review is in the Federal Register notice published on 30 June 2026 by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). It announced the 26th annual review of which sub-Saharan African countries should receive AGOA benefits in calendar year 2027. Written comments closed on 13 July, a public hearing took place in Washington on 23 July, and post-hearing submissions closed on 30 July, all under docket USTR-2026-0298.
The notice explains that the President decides which countries are designated, and that the President must end a country’s designation if it is judged not to meet the eligibility requirements. Those requirements include a market-based economy, the rule of law, the elimination of barriers to US trade and investment, and protection of worker rights. A country also may not engage in activities that undermine US national security or foreign policy interests. The notice lists South Africa among the 33 countries designated for 2026. It does not set a date on which the President will announce the 2027 list, so the “early November” timing comes from Solidarity and not from the US government.
Who is saying what, and when
Solidarity’s warning is the source of the “as early as next week” framing. In a statement issued on 30 September, carried by Polity, the union said the White House was reviewing the list of participating countries and that an announcement was expected by 1 November 2026. Chief executive Dirk Hermann said the South African government had “four weeks left” to prevent the country from being removed. Solidarity’s public liaison, Jaco Kleynhans, told BusinessTech that the White House determines eligibility on an annual basis and is likely to announce its decision at the beginning of November, and that there was good reason to fear South Africa would be excluded next year. These are the union’s assessments. Neither the White House nor USTR has said South Africa will be removed.
The union also said, citing its own discussions with the US government, that Washington regards race-based laws as a trade restriction on American businesses and views South Africa’s foreign policy as hostile. That is Solidarity’s account of what it was told, and we have not seen it confirmed by a US official.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has said publicly that the country should plan for the possibility. At a briefing with editors in Johannesburg on 19 October, according to Briefly News, he said it was unclear whether South Africa would keep its place and that his government was in talks with US counterparts. “I need, as president, to prepare us if it ever happens,” he said. We covered that briefing in our earlier report on Ramaphosa’s warning. We could not find a recent statement from the Presidency or the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition on the timing of the US decision.
Why the 2028 extension does not settle the question
Congress moved AGOA’s end date from December 2026 to December 2028 in the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027, which BusinessTech reported President Donald Trump signed in early September. That is consistent with our coverage of the extension to 2028. The extension changed the end date only. Which countries qualify is a separate executive decision made each year, so the programme can run to 2028 while an individual country is removed from it.
How many jobs are at stake depends on who counts
The job figures in circulation do not match, and none is an official count. According to BusinessTech’s 29 October report, Aluma Capital chief economist Frederick Mitchell said economic modelling suggests that a failure to renew AGOA or an outright expulsion would put between 125,000 and 576,000 direct and indirect jobs at risk. Solidarity put the figure at up to 250,000 jobs partially or fully dependent on AGOA, and said more than 500,000 jobs depend on trade with the US generally. BusinessTech has separately cited estimates of about half a million jobs. The range is wide because exposure is hard to measure.
The same report says roughly 22% of South African exports to the US benefit from AGOA, and that South Africa accounted for 54% of all AGOA-related exports to the US over the programme’s life, worth about R300bn between 2019 and 2024. Mitchell named automotive manufacturing in the Eastern Cape, citrus and deciduous fruit in the Western Cape, and advanced metallurgy as the sectors that depend most on duty-free entry.
A less dire reading from agriculture
Not everyone expects a collapse. Agbiz chief economist and presidential envoy on agriculture Wandile Sihlobo said the loss of AGOA should be judged against the other tariffs already in place. He noted that some South African products currently enter the US at 12.5% following the Section 301 action earlier this year, and that losing AGOA would add a Most Favoured Nation tariff of about 3.4%, taking the rate to 15.9%. That would be a modest hit to competitiveness, he said, and still below the 30%-plus tariffs of the 2025 “liberation day” measures, when South Africa continued to export. South Africa’s agricultural exports to the US totalled $504m in 2025, down 3% on the year before, according to the same report.
BusinessTech added that AGOA is meant to be a long-term arrangement, while the current US tariff regime can change from one administration to the next. If those tariffs were later withdrawn, losing AGOA would leave South African exporters at a sharper disadvantage. Sihlobo said exclusion was not yet guaranteed and that South Africa would keep working to retain access. His figures describe agriculture. They do not show how vehicle or metals exporters would fare, and that is where the larger job estimates sit. For background on the earlier warnings, see our report on the US decision on AGOA eligibility.
What exporters and investors should watch
For businesses selling into the US, the practical position is that nothing changes until Washington acts. Companies with US contracts priced on duty-free terms can model the 15.9% scenario Sihlobo describes for farm goods and check with customers how any new duty would be shared. The decision also sits inside a wider diplomatic dispute, which includes US visa restrictions announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to BusinessTech, and DIRCO’s summoning of the US ambassador, covered in our report on the DIRCO summons.
What is still unknown is the date and form of the US announcement, whether the review could lead to a partial measure such as limiting specific products instead of full removal (the notice says the President may do that), and whether talks between the two governments will change the outcome. Our wider coverage sits under Regulatory & Policy.
