U.S. plans to extend Africa trade deal by a year

Lesotho's trade minister said on Wednesday (24 September) that the U.S. plans to extend the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which gives the continent preferential access to U.S. markets, by a year, after returning from a visit to Washington.

A slew of tariffs that U.S. President Donald Trump imposed on global trading partners on 4 April hit African countries hard. They were widely seen as the death knell for the quarter-century-old AGOA deal, putting millions of livelihoods at risk.

Lesotho initially got hit with the world's highest tariff of 50% on Trump's so-called 'Liberation Day' - ruinous for the tiny mountain kingdom's export-led development model, which was almost entirely dependent on textile factories selling jeans and T-shirts to the U.S.

Trump reduced it to 15% in August. A Lesotho trade delegation visited the U.S. from 15-19 September. 

Minister of Trade, Industry and Business Development Mokhethi Shelile, who led the delegation, told a news conference late on Wednesday that they met U.S. officials. 

"They all agreed that AGOA has to be extended and they promised us that by November or December [at] the latest, it will be extended by a year," Shelile said.

AGOA expires on 30 September and companies that benefit from it have warned that any delay in renewing it risked significant job losses and factory closures.

A spokesman for Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee said, "The Trump administration hasn't informed Finance Committee Democrats [of] its position on renewing AGOA. Ranking Member Wyden continues to support renewing the program."

Copied