While the economic consequences of the recent tariffs announced by U.S. President Donald Trump are still unfolding, the political and diplomatic results for Africa were immediate. It is clear that the United States’ new tariff policy will have a significant impact on African economies and, in turn, U.S.-Africa trade relations. African countries face heightened vulnerability, with several economies likely to suffer serious setbacks due to their reliance on the American market as an export destination. These tariffs also threaten to nullify trade preferences long established in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), at a time when the future of the program is already uncertain. Nevertheless, this moment of uncertainty and instability also presents an opportunity for the African continent. The region should consider resetting its trade relations with the United States, repositioning itself as a vital and strategic trade partner, and advancing and deepening its long-pending economic integration goals.
Overview of the Announced U.S. Tariff Regime
On April 2, 2025, Trump issued Executive Order 14257, which introduced sweeping tariffs on products imported into the United States from 190 countries and territories. The Trump administration announced additional duties in two tranches. First, starting on April 5, 2025, a universal ad valorem tariff of 10 percent would be applied on imports from all the 190 named countries. Second, starting on April 9, 2025, the higher country-specific ad valorem tariffs, ranging from 11 percent to 50 percent, would apply to fifty-seven countries listed in annex I of the executive order (see figure 1). The tariffs were calculated by taking the U.S. trade deficit with a particular country and dividing it by the 2024 total goods imported from that country. The resulting number was subsequently divided by two to reach the final tariff rate.
Nevertheless, the executive order exempts over 1,000 products, including energy supply, critical minerals and rare earths, and organic and inorganic chemicals. It also excludes the U.S. content of any product made in any country, provided that the U.S. content accounts for at least 20 percent of the declared value of the product. Also excluded are products like steel and aluminum, passenger vehicles, light trucks, and vehicle parts. While automobiles and auto parts are already subject to additional tariffs of 25 percent (announced on March 25, 2025), on June 3, 2025, the White House announced that the additional tariffs on steel and aluminum would increase to 50 percent.
Following a week of global shock and stock market crashes, on April 9, the day the country-specific rates were scheduled to enter into force, Trump issued another executive order. This one suspended all the higher country-specific tariffs on products from all countries except China. The additional higher duties on goods from all the other countries are suspended until July 8, 2025. However, the 10 percent rate continues to apply to all imports from the originally named countries and territories.
What Are the New Tariff Rates for African Countries?
Of the fifty-seven countries facing the higher tariff rates, twenty are African. The higher tariffs that will apply on African products range from 11 percent levied on imports from Cameroon and Democratic Republic of the Congo to 50 percent on goods from Lesotho (see figure 2). The latter—a small, southern African, least-developed country—faces the highest tariff increase of all the countries on the list (see figure 1). Besides Lesotho, African countries that face the highest additional tariffs are Madagascar (47 percent), Mauritius (40 percent), Botswana (37 percent), Angola (32 percent), Libya (31 percent), and Algeria and South Africa (both 30 percent). Twenty-nine African countries are subject to only the 10 percent baseline tariff surge; these include Egypt, Ethiopia, and Kenya. At the subregional level, east Africa was spared the higher country-specific tariffs, while southern Africa faces the highest tariff rates on the continent. Only three African countries—Burkina Faso, Seychelles, and Somalia—do not appear on the lists and will not face any tariff increases, presumably because each maintains a trade deficit vis-a-vis the United States.
The tariff announcement was issued during a time of expanding U.S.-Africa trade. According to the United States Trade Representative (USTR), in 2024, U.S. total goods trade with Africa was approximately $71.6 billion (see figure 3). U.S. goods exports to Africa were $32.1 billion, up 11.9 percent ($3.4 billion) from 2023. U.S. goods imports from Africa in 2024 totaled $39.5 billion, up 1.9 percent ($0.8 billion) from 2023. However, the United States had a goods trade deficit with Africa of $7.4 billion. While the recent executive order was premised on rising trade deficits, the 2024 U.S. trade deficit with Africa represented a 26.4 percent decrease ($2.6 billion) from 2023. Nevertheless, the U.S.-Africa trade deficit is unsurprising as African countries largely export commodities like oil, precious stones and metals, minerals, rubber, and other agricultural products like cocoa and nuts, some of which are not produced in the United States.
The over 1,000 exemptions under annex II of the executive order include products like petroleum, precious and base metals (for example, gold and copper), critical minerals (for example, cobalt, manganese, and graphite), and rare earth elements (for example, yttrium and cerium) that are critical for the U.S. economy. Coincidentally, these commodities, especially petroleum, gold, platinum, and copper, comprise Africa’s main export basket. This means that mineral-exporting African countries such as Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zambia could obtain significant relief from the universal and country-specific tariffs because of these product carve-outs.
These tariffs, once in full effect, could have variable impacts on African countries depending on several factors. Our estimates indicate that countries such as Lesotho, Madagascar, and Mauritius will potentially be the most affected because of their relatively higher exports to the United States of products that are not exempt from the tariffs (see table 1). Lesotho, in particular, stands to lose its textiles and clothing industry, which was developed to take advantage of AGOA’s textile preferences. The clothing factories employ close to 40,000 locals, the vast majority of whom are women. South Africa’s motor vehicle exports are also vulnerable due to the 25 percent specific tariff on passenger vehicles.
On the other hand, the relatively lower universal tariff (10 percent) imposed on textile-producing countries like Egypt and Kenya could offer an opportunity for those countries to benefit from better market access in the United States. This advantage is coupled with decreased competition from countries in Asia, such as Bangladesh, India, and Vietnam, that face high cumulative tariffs (37, 26, and 46 percent additional tariff rates, respectively). The United States is Egypt’s top export destination for clothing and apparel. In 2022, Egypt’s exports to the United States totaled $1.5 billion, accounting for over 30 percent of Egypt’s exports of these products. Likewise, for Kenya, in 2022, the U.S. market accounted for almost 70 percent of its textile exports, which are exported to the United States under AGOA’s clothing and textiles preferences.
How Have African Governments Responded So Far?
In the immediate aftermath of the tariff announcements, various governments around the world, including some in Africa, sought to engage the Trump administration on the new tariffs. According to the White House, over seventy-five countries reached out to negotiate in less than a week after the April 2 announcement of the new tariff policy. African countries had varied responses, as indicated in table 2. Some African countries, like Zimbabwe, have offered to unilaterally eliminate tariffs on U.S. imports, while others, like Uganda, have resolved to build more resilient and self-sustaining domestic economies. Moreover, countries like Lesotho, Madagascar, and South Africa announced that they were organizing delegations to hopefully strike a bilateral deal with the United States. In fact, on April 21, 2025, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met with Trump at the White House in an effort to address trade issues, among other topics.
Moreover, on April 10, 2025, African WTO members Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Gambia, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, within a group of thirty-nine “Friends of the System,” co-signed a communiqué in which they undertook to “work closely together to shape the future of the global trading system.” These WTO members pledged “to act and take decisions in an outcome-oriented way and to undertake bold, collective action that reflects the changing dynamics of the global economy and responds to the challenges ahead.”
Implications for the African Growth and Opportunity Act
Looming large in the background is the upcoming termination of AGOA, which is scheduled to lapse on September 30, 2025. AGOA is a nonreciprocal trade preference program that was enacted in 2000 by the Bill Clinton administration to boost sub-Saharan Africa’s economic growth and development by providing eligible countries duty-free access to the U.S. market for thousands of products. While the program has been reauthorized at least once over the last two decades, the America First trade agenda of the Trump administration creates uncertainties around its survival. Many attempts have been made to ensure its reauthorization and modernization. U.S. Senators Chris Coons and James Risch have also proposed expanding AGOA beneficiaries to include North African countries. Yet, reauthorizing the trade preference scheme did not break through the U.S. Congress’s priority list during the Joe Biden administration.
While eligible African countries largely underutilize AGOA, this preference scheme has been the basis of meaningful discussions and U.S. investment in African economic sectors for the past twenty-five years. However, unlike Mexico and Canada under the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, African beneficiaries of this program are not shielded from the additional tariffs imposed and proposed by the United States. Ironically, taking advantage of AGOA preferences is exactly why countries like Lesotho face such high tariff rates. Nevertheless, AGOA’s lapse could leave many African countries with precarious market access opportunities in the United States, especially countries like Lesotho and Madagascar, which export products with high global competition, like textiles and clothing.
There are a few clawback opportunities for some African countries. Trump has issued other executive orders stating his interest in negotiating bilateral and/or sectoral trade agreements where specific minerals and resources are exempt from duties. Moreover, in his America First Trade Policy memorandum, Trump directed the USTR to “identify countries with which the United States can negotiate agreements on a bilateral or sector-specific basis to obtain export market access for American workers.” Many experts have also warned against the deterioration of AGOA and proposed that the current U.S. administration could use the scheme strategically to source critical minerals from Africa. This would help ensure U.S. energy security and supply chain diversification by presenting alternative source countries to mitigate its reliance on China. There is opportunity for an arrangement that focuses AGOA on specific products that are of interest to the United States and draws U.S. investments into those sectors in Africa. Many of these ideas and proposals underscore the necessity for African countries, especially those dependent on exports to the United States, to ensure market access in the United States. For the United States, maintaining good trade relations with Africa ensures that its geopolitical rivals operating on the continent are kept in check.
Conclusion: What’s Next for U.S.-Africa Trade Relations?
The tariffs introduced by Executive Order 14257 threaten many African economies, like Lesotho, that have long regarded the United States as a leading export destination. However, the executive order also offers opportunities for countries like Kenya and Egypt to expand their foothold in the lucrative U.S. textile market due to reduced competition from Asian exporters facing harsher tariffs. Moreover, exemptions for critical commodities such as petroleum and minerals could partially shield leading African exporters of those products to the United States, some of which, like South Africa, face steep country-specific tariffs. Indeed, the uncertainty triggered by the executive order has raised much consternation in Africa about the future of U.S.-Africa trade relations.
African countries, under the leadership of the African Union, could negotiate as a region to bolster their individual market sizes. A coordinated effort would not only shield individual economies but also ensure that any deal reached with the United States does not undermine the region’s trade and economic integration efforts under the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement. Moreover, African countries could use this uncertainty to establish those highly touted regional value chains to benefit from tariff-free or lower-tariff African jurisdictions. Provided that preferences under AGOA can be claimed, this could be a way for higher-tariff jurisdictions to leverage AGOA’s regional cumulation conditions under the agreement’s general rules of origin to maintain some competitiveness in the U.S. market.
The ninety-day suspension of the country-specific tariffs has provided Africa some breathing room. This period provides African countries with an opportunity to convene to create a concrete plan on how to engage with this U.S. administration on trade. Indeed, Africa should use this respite to advance U.S.-Africa trade relations beyond July 8, 2025, and even beyond September 30, 2025. Although Africa accounts for a small slice of total U.S. trade (2 percent in 2021), the African market has the growth potential to consume more U.S. products and, currently, African countries produce products that the United States needs for its strategic and security needs.
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