Trump Tariffs: Which Southern African nations are at risk?

With Donald Trump recently winning the USA presidential election and returning to the White House on the 25th of January 2025, a lot has been made of his tariff policy and the potential beneficiary or deprived states. 

We figured we would look at the historical trade trends between countries in the SADC region and the USA to determine who stands to be most negatively affected by aggressive shifts in tariff policies.

Why is the tariff policy debate so contentious?

The USA’s aggressive tariff stance was initially rooted in the western giant’s feud with China but seems to now be morphing into a general part of Trump’s approach as his rhetoric during his campaign and after winning the elections seem to suggest this time around the tariffs will be applied essentially at global scale:

• The incoming president announced that on his first day in office he would effect 25% tariffs on ALL products coming into the USA from Mexico and Canada in retaliation to illegal immigration, crime and drugs coming from the two neighbouring countries.
• Days before the election, Trump announced that Europe would have “to pay a big price” for not buying enough American products suggesting that a tariff might be on the way.
• Whilst Trump hasn’t specifically mentioned Africa in regards to tariffs he did promise that all foreign-made goods coming into America would have a 10% import tariff attached.

Which countries will be least affected?

The first thing we sought to understand was the value of trade between countries within the SADC region and the USA. In this regard, we’ll start by highlighting unimportant countries whose trade with the USA is negligible and thus requiring little to no focus: