JOHANNESBURG - South Africa will be engaging with the United States about new import tariffs according to Deputy President Paul Mashatile.
US President Donald Trump has imposed a 30% tariff on goods imported from South Africa along with over 50 other global trading partners.
Mashatile said he is concerned that actions of the Trump administration could lead to global recession. He was speaking at the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation Legacy Business Breakfast in Johannesburg on Monday.
The decision has rattled the markets, with equities taking a serious knock.
The JSE has lost around R1-trillion.
READ: Equities savaged as China retaliation to Trump tariffs fans trade war
Mashatile said, “We are very worried, in fact my worry is that this could plunge the global economy into recession. That’s my worry, because others are retaliating. So we think we should have a different approach of lets go and engage with the US administration and see if we will find one another.”
On Monday, the Rand continued to drop against major currencies, almost nearing R25 to the British pound.
The weakening of the Rand cannot only be placed on Trump. There are also local issues weighing in on the economy.
The deputy president said the ANC executive will meet on Monday to discuss tensions within the Government of National Unity.
The Breakfast also weighed in on social cohesion and national building with Executive director Neshaan Bolton saying, “South Africans cohere on a range of things…they don’t like crime, they don’t like civil unrest, so there is a commonality, what we don’t have is to build on that commonality. We will thrive on small differences without actually looking for small differences.”
“We never thought that we would do this badly in the elections. I kept asking why they numbers aren’t going up and they said more numbers will come from Soweto and that never happened. We are also to blame for this because we didn’t sort out the load-shedding crisis fast enough," Mashatile said.