Sawt Falasteen - S.Africa to offer US new deal to avoid 30% tariff

Washington on Friday slapped the huge tariff on some South African exports, the highest in sub-Saharan Africa, despite efforts by Pretoria to negotiate a better arrangement to avoid massive job losses.

The ministers did not release details of the new offer but said previously discussed measures to increase imports of US poultry, blueberries and pork had been finalised.

"When the document is eventually made public, I think you would see it as a very broad, generous and ambitious offer to the United States on trade," Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen said at a press briefing.

Officials have said the 30-percent tariff could cost the economy around 30,000 jobs, with unemployment already at 33.2 percent according to statistics released Tuesday.

"Our goal is to demonstrate that South African exports do not pose a threat to US industries and that our trade relationship is, in fact, complementary," Trade Minister Parks Tau said.

The United States is South Africa's third-largest trading partner after the European Union and China.

However South African exports account for only 0.25 percent of total US imports and are "therefore not a threat to US production", Tau said.

Steenhuisen said US diplomats raised issues related to South African domestic policies, which was a "surprise given the fact we thought we were in a trade negotiation".

The two nations are at odds over a range of domestic and international policies.

US President Donald Trump has criticised land and employment laws meant to redress racial inequalities that linger 30 years after the end of apartheid.

Steenhuisen is from the pro-business Democratic Alliance (DA) party, the second-largest group in the coalition government, that objects to the same laws.

"Things like expropriation without compensation, things like some of the race laws in the country, are issues that they regard as barriers now to doing trade with South Africa," he told AFP on the sidelines of the briefing.

"I think we're seeing some form of a new era now where trade and tariffs are being used to deal with other issues, outside of what would generally be trade concerns," Steenhuisen said.

- 'New normal' -

Other countries, including Brazil and India, have been slapped with "far more punitive tariffs" because of ideological disagreements with the Trump administration, he said.

“This is obviously a new normal to which we're going to all have to adapt,” Steenhuisen said.

Although US diplomatic ties with several countries have plummeted since Trump took office in January, Pretoria has so far said that political disagreements had not come up in the trade negotiations.

Tau said the negotiations with the United States were "unprecedented" as they did not follow the World Trade Organization rule book.

"That book has been put on the side for now and all of us are grappling with the reality of what we are dealing with," Tau said, adding it still remained "important that we reaffirm our own commitments to our own sovereignty as a country".

G.AbuGhazaleh--SF-PST