Playing chicken on the AGOA speedway

South Africa was eventually included in the newest version of AGOA - the African Growth and Opportunity Act - but with an important proviso. This was the requirement that there was progress in sorting out access to South African markets by American poultry, pork and beef exporters.

©Alexey Ukhov via 123RF

But the negotiations on these questions seem to have come to a stumbling block and the US invoked a provision of AGOA to restrict South African exports of agricultural products to the US in two months unless things are sorted out. J. Brooks Spector takes a look yet again at AGOA issues.

A few months back, the United States Congress - after some soul-searching about giving Barack Obama any kind of victory in trade legislation - passed a new version of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, AGOA. Two earlier articles by the author published in Daily Maverick (Links here and here) had, earlier, chronicled the challenges to AGOA's passage, as well as the opportunities that would come available as long as the AGOA trade window remained open for business for South Africa. The original legislation had become law 15 years earlier, and, this time around, there had been some real concerns South...

Read the full story on the Daily Maverick website.