Obama threatens action against South Africa for blocking meat shipments

In a statement responding to President Obama’s announcement, South Africa’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said that contrary to USA remarks, the country has been making “continual progress” to implement the Paris agreement.

In a letter to Congress, Obama said he was taking the step because South Africa “continued to impose barriers to US trade”.

When the U.S. Congress renewed AGOA in June for 10 years, it gave the U.S. Trade Representative and the White House the option – which they are now preparing to exercise – of suspending non-compliant countries’ benefits on a product-by-product basis, BusinessDayLive reported.

“Therefore, we strongly support the administration’s actions to hold South Africa accountable for failure to resume import of USA chicken”.

South Africa missed an October 15 deadline to agree to new rules for imports of United States poultry and meat products.

I have determined that such suspension of benefits would be more effective in promoting compliance by South Africa with the eligibility requirements listed in section 104 of AGOA than the termination of South Africa’s designation as a beneficiary sub-Saharan African country, as it would better promote continuing efforts between the United States and South Africa to resolve these outstanding issues.

South Africa is however concerned that unsafe meat may be imported from the US.

The two sides are meeting this afternoon. In 2014, it shipped $1.7 billion of goods to the United States under AGOA and $1.3 billion under the GSP program.

The paper also quoted the Vice-Chairman of the Citrus Growers Association Piet Smit as saying that a loss of AGOA benefits would have a severe impact on citrus growers in the Western and Northern Cape. Have we tried to make it happen more quickly? Fruit, vegetables, wine and tree nuts were all imported duty free under the agreement.

Froman said: “We are disappointed that South Africa has yet to resolve these issues”.

“Now, has the process taken a little bit longer that we thought? Yes”.

U.S. Senators Chris Coons of Delaware and Johnny Isakson of Georgia – states with large poultry interests – said in a statement, “There is still time to address these issues, and we hope the president’s action today spurs South Africa to open their market to American poultry immediately”, BusinessDayLive reported.

DA official, Geordin Hill-Lewis says it had been warning the DTI for more than a year on the AGOA “high stakes” issue.