US House committee approves AGOA extension, leaves out South Africa

A U.S. House committee on Wednesday approved a bill that would renew for another three years Washington's preferential trade programme for Africa, and there was no immediate mention of excluding South Africa, as the U.S. trade envoy had said was possible.

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a law first enacted in 2000 to provide duty-free access to the U.S. market for eligible Sub-Saharan countries and products, expired in September, and hundreds of thousands of African jobs are estimated to depend on it.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Tuesday the Trump administration was open to a one-year extension but might exclude South Africa, which he described as a "unique problem".

The U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means approved the AGOA Extension Act by a vote of 37-3, a committee statement said, describing the trade initiative as "the cornerstone of economic relations between the U.S. and Sub-Saharan African nations".

"An extended lapse in AGOA would create a void that malign actors like China and Russia will seek to fill," the statement added.

The bill will pass to the full House of Representatives, though it is not yet clear when it will take it up.

South Africa's trade ministry says it is doing everything it can to ensure the country is included in any AGOA extension, even though relations with the U.S. have soured badly during Trump's second term in office.

Trump has railed against Africa's biggest economy for its policies addressing racial inequality, and trade official Greer says it needs to lower tariffs and non-tariff barriers on U.S. products for the U.S. to reduce the 30% duties it imposed on South African goods in August.

South Africa says the Trump administration based its tariffs on an inaccurate view of the two countries' trade.

A trade ministry spokesperson said South Africa was tracking the progress of the AGOA Extension Act closely.