The government will grant exporters a temporary harbour from antitrust rules, part of a broader relief package unveiled on Monday in response to a unilateral 30% US import tariff due to take effect this week.
The so-called block exemption, to be published this week, allows rival exporters to co-ordinate infrastructure, logistics and market intelligence without fear of cartel prosecution.
It forms the cornerstone of Pretoria’s emergency export support measures, alongside a new export support desk and targeted funding from the R340m localisation support fund.
In a joint press conference hosted by trade, industry & competition minister Parks Tau and his counterpart in international relations & co-operation, Ronald Lamola, the government, in partnership with the Industrial Development Corporation, will invite applications from eligible companies to absorb and offset the new 30% tariff by cutting their underlying costs.
In addition, the government is also working on the so-called export and competitiveness support programme, which would address the immediate funding crunch and the need for productivity enhancements, Lamola told reporters.
Without swift countermeasures to the tariff wall, up to 100,000 jobs could be lost, headline inflation could rise by 0.4 percentage points and GDP could shrink by about 0.6 percentage points, while the rand could come under pressure, according to estimates from the Reserve Bank.
“We are also working with the department of labour on measures to mitigate potential job losses, using existing instruments within its entities that can be adjusted to respond to the current challenges,” said Lamola, who read the statement.
The emergency toolkit — working capital lines, localisation, export support desk and labour mitigation measures — is not a long-term lifeline for the agricultural and motor vehicle sectors, which are the heartbeat of an economy whose prospects had already been whacked by structural constraints.
Tau said it would take time to figure out and establish alternative trading channels, and that it would be irresponsible of the government to enter into rushed trade deals with China or others without proper due diligence.
“China says, ‘we will allow imports from Africa, bar one country, with zero trade tariffs’, but they want us to also have zero import tariffs, so we have to look at what impact that will have on us. We will negotiate with a view to what is in our interest,” he said. “We are having similar discussions with the EU, but these talks do take a long time. We are looking at markets we can liberate more quickly.”
The tariff blow escalates the diplomatic tension between Pretoria and Washington, which has expressed disdain for SA’s BEE, land reform policies and the government’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) case against Israel amid suggestions that Iran is bankrolling the case.
Lamola said the allegations over Iran were a “conspiracy [theory] and propaganda”.
“The SA government pays for this case at the ICJ. There is no Iran that has paid our legal bills, nor are there big trade deals between SA and Iran. Like BEE, these [are] issues that have not been raised with us by the US government. It is conspiracy theory.”
In his breakdown of what unfolded in the three months of negotiations with the US over a new trade deal, Tau laid bare the fractured process, describing an unprecedented diplomatic impasse in which protocol gave way to opacity and offers were made in the dark.
He detailed how SA’s proactive submissions of a framework deal in May, aimed at addressing trade imbalances, tariff relief and commercial co-operation, were not met with structured dialogue, but a shifting set of expectations.
Days before US President Donald Trump signed the order to impose tariffs on SA exports, Tau was hopeful that talks would progress to a more meaningful stage, possibly to the US sharing a template tailored for countries in the region, after US officials asked Pretoria to sign a confidentiality agreement.
Eventually, SA’s negotiators were told, on the eve of the tariff hike, to ignore the template and submit an unconditional offer with no promise of a reply.
“We have waited for the US’s template and we are still waiting. They said ‘send us your offer’, which we did and yet there were still no negotiations. We made an offer, and had to sit back and wait and hope, and we are still waiting. These are unprecedented trade negotiations,” Tau said.
Tau’s account paints a picture of a country boxed into diplomacy on someone else’s terms — reactive and restrained. Still, he echoed Lamola’s sentiment that Pretoria remained actively engaged with the US government.
“We continue to engage the US. For us not to would be irresponsible,” Tau said.
Lamola insisted that having an ambassador in the US would not have made a difference.
Update: August 4 2025
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