Written by Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist at Agbiz
Things just keep changing, and I am now compelled to provide another update on this issue.
It appears that U.S. will now place a 15% tariff on all imports, seemingly replacing the previous higher tariffs before the U.S. Supreme Court judgement.
If this is a new possibility, then it will bode well for South Africa. The 15% tariff will be a great relief from the 30% we have struggled with in the past few months.
Of course, there remains profound uncertainty about these issues as the U.S. administration seeks to explore ways to maintain the higher tariffs we faced before the Supreme Court’s judgment.
For us in South Africa’s agriculture, our competitors in the US market faced much lower tariffs, around 10%, and managed to take our market share in some products.
The US remains an important market for South Africa, accounting for about 4% of our exports.
The main exported products include citrus, berries, grapes, wine, fruit juices, apples, pears, apricots, and nuts, among others.
Some South African exporters took advantage of the 90-day pause on the higher tariffs in 2025 and exported more volume than usual during the second quarter of the year. We saw some cooling in exports in the third and fourth quarters of 2025.
Notably, South Africa’s agricultural exports to the U.S. decreased by 11% in the third quarter of 2025, compared to the same period in 2024, at US$144 million.
In the last quarter of 2025, South Africa’s agricultural exports to the U.S. fell sharply by 39% to US$81 million.
From an annual perspective, South Africa’s agricultural exports to the U.S. in 2025 totalled US$504 million, down 3% from the previous year.
This slight annual decline doesn’t suggest that the 30% “Liberation Day tariffs” aren’t affecting the industry; we benefited from substantial exports in the second quarter.
We believe that in 2026, we will be able to get a clearer picture of the impact of all these tariffs, and hopefully, the 15% tariff will remain in place for some time.
The article first appeared at https://wandile.substack.com/p/trump-tariffs-and-uncertainty
Photo by Life Of Pix: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photography-of-empire-state-new-york-7613/
