Ramaphosa’s failed last-ditch effort to avoid Trump’s tariffs

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and US President Donald Trump held a phone call Wednesday, a day before Washington’s 30% tariffs on the nation’s goods entering the US kicked in. 

“The two leaders undertook to continue with further engagements, recognising the various trade negotiations the US is currently involved in,” South Africa’s presidency said in a statement Thursday. “Respective trade negotiating teams will take forward more detailed discussions.” 

The US’s duties on South African goods going into the world’s biggest economy are the highest charged on exports from any sub-Saharan nation, and form part of a US shakeup of its relationship with trading partners. 

South Africa’s biggest political party, the ANC, said the government won’t bow to demands from Donald Trump’s administration to change its policies even if that means its leaders are subjected to US sanctions.

The Trump administration has made a raft of demands, including that South Africa abandon laws that were put in place after apartheid ended in 1994 and are aimed at addressing persisting racial inequality, said Fikile Mbalula, the secretary-general of the African National Congress.

The party governed the country outright for three decades before losing its parliamentary majority in last year’s elections, and it subsequently entered into an alliance with nine rivals to retain power. 

“They want us to do away with certain policies. It is not going to be possible,” Mbalula told reporters in Johannesburg on Wednesday.

“If it means we are going to suffer through sanctions as leaders of the ANC, let it be. We will never back imperialists to subvert our democracy, to subvert our sovereignty.” 

Relations between South Africa and the US have been fraught since Trump returned to the White House in January. He has falsely accused the African nation’s government of presiding over a genocide of White farmers, and criticized its international allegiances. 

The new tariffs will place 30,000 jobs at risk in South Africa, according to the trade department, exacerbating one of the world’s worst unemployment crises.

The auto and agricultural sectors will be hardest hit, with the US a major export market for both industries.