Ahead of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s meeting with his US counterpart next week, independent political and economic analyst JP Landman said he had strong reservations about whether the Trump Administration would proceed with 30% tariffs against South Africa.
Speaking at a ‘Nation in Conversation’ event that Nedbank hosted at Nampo Harvest Day 2025, the outspoken thought leader said various setbacks had exposed what many other commentators were beginning to view as Trump’s bluff – the threat of punishing duties to score trade wins.
Never shy to use colourful language to get his point across, Landman repeatedly used an Afrikaans word to describe a smack involving nasal fluid to underscore the setbacks the US had experienced since Trump made his ‘reciprocal tariff’ announcement in early April.
Asked what would happen when the current 90-day pause on the tariff increases expired in mid-June, Landman said: “Nothing will happen.
“He’s not going to bring it back. Why? Because two days after he made the announcement, he changed his mind because of the setback experienced by the US bond market.
“Then, on a Saturday, it emerged that he wanted to fire the chairman of the US Federal Reserve. Why? Because of the setbacks the US was having. But by the following Tuesday he was dialling it back yet again.”
Landman said other setbacks in short succession included the pounding that the US currency and equity markets were experiencing.
He noted that Trump’s trade foe in chief, Chinese President Xi Jinping, appeared to have figured out his US adversary’s game, coming across as deliberately unfazed about an often mooted Heads-of-State meeting.
Landman said a familiar saying was going around lately, one that originated during Trump’s first term – “Taco, Trump again chickens out.”
However, he remarked that it all came down to Ramaphosa’s visit to Washington next week.
Fellow panellist, Louw Pienaar, a senior analyst at the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy, said it was very much about navigating the landscape that formed the focus of the Nedbank event – ‘Global trade: where to from here’.
He said there was a lot of noise around tariffs but that South Africa’s trade relations with the US were really about a couple of issues – agricultural technicalities regarding blueberries, preferential procurement, and the Expropriation Act.
He said what the US wanted to see was various concessions around certain policy matters, and if South Africa didn’t at least enter negotiations about these, Trump might very well use 30% tariffs to apply pressure on the Government of National Unity.
“I think they are going to be very aggressive with South Africa about issues around foreign and industrial policy.”
