Image by Paul Teysen.

U.S. President Donald Trump apparently aims to reassert his power to cause a full-blown economic catastrophe, perhaps reminiscent of 1930s-scale Make America Great Depression Again. The self-harm to his own MAGA lower-middle-class social base – especially consumers of cheap imports – will soon become evident when price inflation rises.

But since Trump hit South Africa hard on July 8 with a 30% general tariff (though there are exceptions such as platinum, gold and other minerals which are zero-rated), will we find any creative economic planners in Pretoria, and in the big Johannesburg corporates, now preparing for potentially fast-falling export markets? Not only do they face the rise from the current 10% global tariff to 30% (and an extra 20% for steel and aluminum), but there is also likely to be a 10% BRICS-penalty addition.

What about all the white farmers – allegedly victimized by South Africa’s genocidal state, in the fevered imagination of Trump and Elon Musk – who from August 1, will be the main losers from a rapid rise in the U.S.-import price of their citrus, macadamia nuts, grapes and wine, e.g. in the town of Citrusdal?

Beyond these, two other threats loom: first, a flood of too-cheap goods that are already appearing now in containers being sent to South Africa from other Trump trade victims, especially China; and second, the European Union’s ‘Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism’ climate sanctions on CO2-embedded exports that take effect on January 1, due to state power company Eskom’s failure to kick the coal habit.

There are four strategic options. First, meekly succumb and second, seek out new markets (especially in Africa and China) – which are ultimately fake antidotes, compared to two real ones: fight back collectively (e.g. in the G20 process), and stimulate the local economy. Consider each in turn.

Obsequious South Africa

The first, a ‘Plan A,’ was on display on May 21 in the White House Oval Office, and over lunch afterwards, in a disturbingly servile manner, e.g. golfer Ernie Els thanking Trump that the U.S. supported the apartheid-era army (in which he served in 1988-89), during a war against Angola that began in the mid-1970s.

For context, recall that, as Trump put it on April 8, “these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass, they are. They are dying to make a deal: ‘please please sir.’”

South Africa was one such caller, and aside from Ramaphosa’s plaintive appeal (‘please please, sir,’ won’t you play golf with me?), Trade Minister Parks Tau’s bend-the-knee offer to Trump – never made public but leaked to some extent – is that South African consumers will buy much more U.S.-sourced methane gas and oil.

At the same time, the New York Times reported, Minerals and Petroleum Minister Gwede Mantashe would be asked to hand over South Africa’s own undeveloped offshore oil and gas leases to U.S. Big Oil (probably replacing the likes of TotalEnergies, Shell and local firm Impact Africa). Successful environmental and community litigation plus more than a hundred shoreline protests against such drilling, starting in late 2021, went unmentioned.

A coming methane gas addiction may be a juggernaut difficult to reverse unless those protests and lawsuits intensify. Indeed, massive new U.S. oil buying was already being unilaterally implemented in April, as South Africa purchased crude petroleum worth $80 million that month, double the level from the U.S. in April 2024.

Yet Trump’s temporary 10% tariffs were already kicking in by the end of April 2025 (the last data available), leading to monthly crashes of major South African exports to the U.S., compared to the same month in 2024: automobile sales down by $79 million (-52%), platinum by $56 million (-17.1%) and diamonds by $34 million (-63.9%).

It’s now clear from the new 30% general tariff on South Africa to take effect August 1, plus the 50% special world-wide sector tariff on steel and aluminum (and 25% on autos), plus the BRICS penalty of 10%, that Plan A has unequivocally failed.

Chinese and African trade roadblocks

So on July 8, even the ordinarily-optimistic, always-soothing Cyril Ramaphosa had to cut his losses and finally order “government trade negotiations teams and South African companies to accelerate their diversification efforts in order to promote better resilience in both global supply chains and the South African economy.”

If Plan B is to diversify exports, then what about major problems in both continental and Chinese markets, the two most hyped growth prospects. First, the South African clothing, textiles, footwear, appliances and electronics sectors were wrecked by Asian competition during the 1990s, crashing manufacturing value added as a share of GDP from its 1990 peak of 24% GDP to 12% today, a deeper dive than even Sub-Saharan Africa as a........

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