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."
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Start your day informed with AnewZ Morning Brief: here are the top news stories for the 5th of November, covering the latest developments you need to know.
UNESCO has officially designated 15 December as World Turkic Language Family Day, marking an historic recognition of the linguistic and cultural heritage shared by Turkic-speaking nations.
Zohran Mamdani made history on 4 November, 2025, when he won New York City's mayoral election, becoming the city's first Muslim mayor, first South Asian mayor, and youngest mayor in over a century.
Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani has won New York City’s mayoral election, defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo in a landmark victory that makes him the city’s first Muslim mayor.
The U.S. Senate has blocked a Republican-backed funding bill for the 14th time, as the government shutdown reached 35 days on Tuesday — tying the longest in U.S. history.
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