Susan Rice, former Africa director in President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council and President Barack Obama’s UN ambassador, has also been punted as a possible secretary of state. He is a firm advocate of closer US ties with Africa – and with SA – even if his constituents put him under pressure back then to force Pretoria to open its chicken market. Ironically, Chris Coons, the Democrat senator for the chicken-producing state of Delaware, who put the squeeze on SA back in 2015, is now a strong contender to become Biden’s secretary of state. It was the Obama administration that provisionally suspended some of SA’s Agoa benefits in 2015 because of the high import tariffs Pretoria had slapped on imports of US chicken and other meat products.
Having said that, it must be recalled that the US government largely responds to the demands of its private sector on commercial issues. The review threatens both SA’s enjoyment of US market access under the General System of Preferences (GSP) and the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa). US – which has been jeopardised by claims from US producers of music and other creative material that their copyrights are being violated here. This, along with the prominent role Biden played as a senator who pushed for US sanctions against the apartheid government in the 1980s, has given him a strong interest in SA.īiden could be sympathetic to Pretoria’s entreaties, for the US to lift steep increases of duties on steel and aluminium imports, which the Trump administration imposed on SA and many other nations.Īnd he is likely to be more sympathetic to SA’s position in the current review that the US is undertaking on SA’s continued preferential trade access to the
Bidens day one agenda free#
This person should have the primary responsibility of managing US relations with the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, which is set to start operating on 1 January next year.Īrnold notes that Biden’s daughter-in-law, Melissa, married to his son Hunter, is South African. Arnold recalls how Trump instead signalled contempt by taking over two years to nominate an ambassador.Īnd Biden could send a positive message to wider Africa by appointing someone to the same position he held, as Minister Counsellor to Africa for Commercial Affairs. Trump’s supporters, who still represent just under half of the US population, will be roaring resistance.Īfrica and SA are likely to be bumped further down the priority list, acknowledges Millard Arnold, a SA-based US lawyer who served as the first minister counsellor to Africa for commercial affairs for the US department of commerce during the Clinton administration.īut he believes Biden could send a strong positive message to Pretoria immediately by nominating a prominent person – very likely an African American – as his ambassador to the country. The Republicans will likely retain control of the senate, able and ready to block Biden’s nominees as he tries to set up an administration and to repair the institutions gutted by Trump. The Covid-19 pandemic is resurging, for one thing. Assuming Biden is sworn in on 20 January, he will have many other priorities, domestic and foreign. Where does this all leave South Africa and Africa, though? Neither ever features very high on Washington’s agenda, and Trump aggravated the neglect and added gratuitous insult. He could, and might very well, also return the US to the Iran de-nuclearisation deal, rejoining European allies. And another one to reinstate the US in the Paris Agreement on climate change. Like one to Geneva, to tell the World Health Organization that the US is back.
Globally, there are other calls Biden can make on day one.
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