Turning Crisis into Realignment:  Need for South Africa’s Bold Response to U.S. Tariffs

 By Mphuthumi Ntabeni | Political Review

When the United States announced new trade restrictions on South African imports, tariffs it framed as retaliatory and rooted in a broader matrix of political grievance, it signalled not merely a commercial rift, but a watershed in South Africa’s post-apartheid economic diplomacy. The immediate impacts are considerable. They involve threatened export sectors, job insecurity, and renewed doubt over the sustainability of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). But the more enduring danger lies in failing to read this rupture as a historic inflection point and an opening rather than merely a loss.

This is not merely a moment for reaction. It is a moment for realignment.

 Many within South Africa have rightly criticised the government’s muted response, contrasting it with Washington’s brash unilateralism. South Africa must not meet such posturing with silence, nor should it respond with brash retaliation. It must, instead, deliberately reorientate its economic actions unapologetically with what I call responsible boldness.

What distinguishes this moment, however, is the broader historical context. The post–Cold War era of U.S. unipolarity, during which Washington could set the rules of global commerce with little challenge, is drawing to a close. The rise of China, India, Brazil, and Russia, alongside agile regional actors like Türkiye and the UAE, signals a shift in the global centre of gravity. These nations are no longer simply alternate trading partners. They are architects of a new global order, increasingly setting the terms rather than merely receiving them.

This moment also holds wider significance. The American hegemony is adjusting to the new global order. Every country will respond to this emerging order in the manner best suited to its own national interests. In South Africa’s case, this must include a long-overdue shift from trade dependency toward sovereign economic resilience, with deeper integration into Southern Africa, and strategic repositioning among BRICS and Eastern economies.

American tariffs are seldom just about trade. They are tools of geopolitical signalling. Whether imposed in response to Pretoria’s non-aligned posture on the Russia–Ukraine conflict, its increasing closeness with China, or its forthright condemnation of Israeli aggression in Gaza, these penalties echo a long-standing imperial reflex. The middle powers who stray from the Western consensus must be disciplined according to US bullish foreign policy.

BRICS is no longer a polite diplomatic forum. It is emerging as a counterbalance to the G7 and a platform for institutional redesign, currency diversification, and trade reorientation. South Africa’s role within it is not merely symbolic. As the only African member, Pretoria carries the representational weight of the continent. It must now begin to carry the strategic weight as well.

This is not to suggest a wholesale abandonment of Western relationships. The United States and European Union remain important partners. But clarity is now essential. AGOA, for all its surface-level generosity, has always been a gift dispensed on Washington’s terms, and a unilaterally granted privilege, not a treaty negotiated in mutual respect. The current tariffs merely lay bare the structural asymmetry embedded in such arrangements. The lesson is plain: privilege can be revoked at any moment the master of hegemony feels their interests threatened. 

How then should South Africa respond?

Not with nationalist sabre-rattling, protectionist theatrics, or populist noise. Nor with the demure diplomacy of appeasement. A path exists between resignation and bravado, a doctrine of responsible boldness. This draws from the discipline of realism, but is rooted in a moral and strategic imagination.

 This requires several concrete actions:

1. Accelerate BRICS Integration

The BRICS nations must not remain a rhetorical abstraction. South Africa should actively champion the institutionalisation of intra-BRICS trade frameworks, whether through a BRICS settlement currency, tariff harmonisation, or digital trade corridors. Negotiations must move beyond communiqués and into implementation. In doing so, South Africa must anchor its agenda in regional solidarity, ensuring that Southern African economies like Namibia, Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique are incorporated into the benefits of BRICS trade infrastructure. A regionalised BRICS strategy is not just ethical; it is economically prudent.

2. Deepen Continental Value Chains

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) offers a generational opportunity to reshape intra-African commerce. Rather than treating the continent as a stepping-stone to Western markets, South Africa must begin treating Africa as an end in itself. Agro-processing, digital services, green manufacturing, and industrial linkages with neighbouring states can build durable economic ecosystems. A single rand circulating in Lesotho or Zimbabwe may yield more systemic value than a fleeting dollar from a politically conditional U.S. contract.

3. Rethink Trade Diplomacy

Pretoria must not allow Washington to define the parameters of legitimacy. Instead, it should propose a restructured AGOA, one rooted in mutual accountability, equitable dispute resolution, and long-term certainty. But South Africa and other African nations must also be prepared to walk away from AGOA if the cost of inclusion is political subservience. South Africa cannot allow itself to be economically blackmailed into diplomatic silence. A dignified exit from AGOA, if necessary, would be a powerful declaration of sovereignty, not based on petulance but principle.

4. Harness the Green Transition

South Africa’s economy remains vulnerable to commodity cycles and energy insecurity. But the global energy transition offers more than risk, it offers reinvention. The Just Energy Transition must become a platform not merely for decarbonisation, but for reindustrialisation. Investments in battery metals, hydrogen fuel technologies, and circular economies must be strategically aligned with Asian and African markets, rather than being outsourced to European consultants or Western financiers with extractive agendas.

5. Build South–South Technological Sovereignty

Digital infrastructure and AI governance will define the next phase of global power. South Africa must become a technological bridge between Africa and the East. Joint ventures with India, Indonesia, China, and Brazil in semiconductors, cloud services, and tech regulation can seed a long-term vision of digital independence. A Sou–South innovation fund, coordinated through BRICS or the African Union, could support regional talent, intellectual property retention, and pan-African digital literacy.

The Opportunity in Adversity

 Tariffs, ultimately, are reminders. They remind us that global trade is not conducted in a vacuum of fairness. They remind us that economic dependence will always translate into political vulnerability. And they remind us that autonomy has a cost, but so too does servitude.

More importantly, they offer opportunity.

South Africa has long occupied a liminal space between the global North and South. We are praised for our liberal institutions, admired for our resource endowments, and yet repeatedly treated as a proxy. South Africa is treated, by the West, as a convenient postcolonial partner when compliant, and an irritant when she stands on principles that progress the project of justice and humanity for all. This moment demands that we finally resolve this ambivalence.

We must choose alignment out of purpose. Not in opposition to the West, but in fidelity to our own developmental vision. A multipolar ethics, rooted in strategic independence, reciprocal partnerships, and internal capacity-building, is no longer an idealist fantasy. It is an urgent necessity.

Yet, in embracing a post-Western realignment, South Africa must not slip into moral relativism. Neither China nor Russia, despite their rhetorical allegiance to sovereignty and non-intervention, can be exempt from scrutiny on human rights and humanitarian norms. Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghurs and its suppression of civil liberties in Hong Kong, and Moscow’s brutal conduct in Ukraine and Syria, demand principled distance and consistent rebuke. The lack of freedom and internal democracy within these global giants is something to be deplored based on the values of constitutional democracy South Africa aspires towards.

South Africa’s liberation heritage imposes a moral obligation to speak honestly to allies as well as adversaries. Real sovereignty is not only freedom from domination, but fidelity to ethical standards in all global engagements. This is what informed our standing for Palestinian justice and freedom against Israeli domination and genocide. Strategic realignment must not come at the cost of our humanitarian conscience and alignment to constitutional democracy.

 In the end, responsible boldness means not only defending one’s place in the world, but choosing the terms on which one engages with it. In the end, responsible boldness does not mean cutting ties, but reshaping them. It means asserting the right not only to exist in the global economy, but to co-author its future. It means refusing to be the compliant junior partner in someone else’s story, and insisting on writing our own.