By Nellie Peyton
PRETORIA (Reuters) -South Africa will submit a revised offer for a trade deal to Washington on Tuesday, the trade minister said, in an effort to lower the 30% tariff rate U.S. President Donald Trump imposed on exports to the United States last week.
The government of Africa’s biggest economy has tried for months to negotiate a U.S. trade deal but failed to reach agreement before Trump’s deadline.
South African exports to the U.S. were hit with the highest tariff rate in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Cabinet has approved that South Africa submits a revised offer as a basis for negotiations with the U.S.,” Parks Tau told a press conference. The revised offer was expected to be submitted on Tuesday, he said.
“The new offer substantively responds to the issues the U.S. has raised in the 2025 National Trade Estimates Report,” Tau said, adding that South Africa had addressed some sanitary and phytosanitary issues from the report. He did not provide further details on the offer.
Containers of poultry and pork were to be shipped from the U.S. to South Africa in two weeks’ time, showing that these issues had been resolved, Tau said.
Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen had previously said that Trump’s team felt South Africa’s initial offer for a trade deal was not ambitious enough.
Steenhuisen, also leader of the second-biggest party in the coalition government, said the new offer was a “broad, generous and open offer that I think meets the ambition criteria.”
“If one was to look at this through the trade and tariff perspective, I think this offer represents something that would be good for the United States and also good for South Africa,” he said.
In an interview with Reuters on Monday, Steenhuisen said there was a risk the 30% tariffs would remain unless South Africa’s government changed some domestic race policies such as affirmative action, which Trump has criticised.
(Reporting by Nellie Peyton; Writing by Alexander Winning and Sfundo Parakozov; Editing by Rachna Uppal)
