There is much anxiety in South Africa about the possibility of losing access to the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa).
Much of it is understandable. Trade preferences feel tangible; their removal feels punitive. And in a period of already heightened economic insecurity, the idea that South Africa might be “pushed out” of a major trade arrangement with the US easily becomes a proxy for something deeper — a fear of isolation, of decline, of doors quietly closing.
But when one steps back from the immediacy of the political drama and looks carefully at the structure of South Africa’s exports under Agoa a different picture begins to emerge, one that is far less dramatic and far more instructive.
South Africa’s Agoa exports are not broadly spread across the economy. They are, in fact, overwhelmingly concentrated in just two sectors.
Motor vehicles and vehicle components account for 60%-65% of Agoa exports. Agriculture and agro-processed goods account for 20%-25%.
Together, these two sectors make up almost 90% of South Africa’s Agoa-related trade. Everything else — chemicals, textiles, light manufacturing and so on — is comparatively marginal.
This concentration matters, because once it is recognised, much of the alarmist commentary starts to lose its force.
Regarding the vehicle sector, on paper, Agoa provides duty-free access to the US market for South African-built vehicles. In practice though, that benefit has already been largely nullified.
Regarding the vehicle sector, on paper, Agoa provides duty-free access to the US market for South African-built vehicles. In practice though, that benefit has already been largely nullified. The US has imposed a 25% tariff on imported vehicles under its national security legislation. That tariff applies irrespective of Agoa. It applies to allies and non-allies alike. Whether South Africa remains in Agoa or not, its vehicles already face that penalty.
The single largest component of South Africa’s Agoa exports has, for all practical purposes, thus already lost the benefit that Agoa was meant to provide. When commentators warn that an exit from Agoa will devastate the vehicle industry, they are often describing a counterfactual world that no longer exists. The damage they fear has, to a significant extent, already been front-loaded.
That leaves agriculture, the second-largest Agoa sector, and here the picture is even more revealing. Only a very small share of South Africa’s agricultural exports goes to the US, about 3%-4%. Most of South African agricultural exports flows to Africa, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
In comparing exports between January and September 2024 with the same period in 2025, something striking appears — growth in non-US agricultural markets exceeded $1bn. By contrast, total agricultural exports to the US during the comparable 2024 period amounted to well under $400m.
Even if South Africa had lost the entire US agricultural market, the expansion in other markets would thus have more than compensated for that loss at the level of the sector as a whole. That is not an ideological claim; it is a numerical one.
At this point, critics often interject that matters could have been different; that better diplomacy, a softer tone, or clearer alignment with Washington might have spared South Africa the vehicle tariffs and preserved the full value of Agoa. The difficulty with that argument is that it does not survive contact with reality.
Tariffs target US allies
The same coercive trade instruments have been applied to close US allies, including countries in Europe, Canada and East Asia. National-security tariffs are not instruments of diplomatic persuasion; they are instruments of domestic industrial policy. To imagine that South Africa could have negotiated exemptions that even long-standing allies have struggled to secure is less realism than wishful thinking.
None of this is to suggest that Agoa is meaningless or that its loss would be painless. Certain firms, regions and product lines would undoubtedly feel the impact. Trade transitions are never frictionless. But there is an important difference between acknowledging adjustment costs and indulging in exaggerated narratives of economic catastrophe.
In truth, what the Agoa debate exposes is something more structural and uncomfortable. Agoa was never designed for middle-income countries with diversified manufacturing bases. South Africa’s inclusion was always an anomaly, and Washington has been debating “graduation” for more than a decade. What we are witnessing now is less a sudden punishment than the slow unravelling of a dependence that was never meant to be permanent.
If there is a lesson here, it is not one of victimhood or of diplomatic moralising. It is a lesson about economic realism. South Africa’s greatest protection has not come from trade preferences but from diversification, from quietly expanding markets beyond any single country, and from reducing exposure to the political cycles of distant capitals.
The danger, then, is not that Agoa might end, but that we misunderstand where South Africa is actually vulnerable and where, quietly and without much fanfare, it has already learnt to adapt.
• Swanepoel is CEO of the Inclusive Society Institute.
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