Steenhuisen: It’s been tough to talk shop with US amid demands for concessions on a trade deal
Steenhusien joined Trade and Industry Minister Parks Tau at a joint media briefing in Tshwane on Tuesday after a revised offer was drafted for Washington’s nod.
Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen. Picture: Alpha Ramushwana/EWN.
JOHANNESBURG - Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen said it’s been tough to talk shop with the US amid demands for concessions on a trade deal that he claims has been negotiated outside of economic parameters.
Steenhusien joined Trade and Industry Minister Parks Tau at a joint media briefing in Tshwane on Tuesday after a revised offer was drafted for Washington’s nod.
Last week, South African trade officials failed to secure an agreement with the US administration before the implementation of punitive tariffs.
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Imports from South Africa into the US now carry a 30% duty.
The Trump administration previously called for sa to relax import regulations on America's pork in exchange for them maintaining duty-free citrus from the country.
But this sparked fears that SA’s pig farms would be at risk of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome - a devastating and hard-to-contain disease.
Regulations for poultry imports from the us - previously banned over a bird flu outbreak - have also been relaxed under the conditional self-ban and self-lifting system.
"This will ensure that the us is able to leverage the tariff rate quota of 72,000 tons already agreed in 2016," said Trade and Industry Minister Parks Tau.
With the US already set to ship containers of poultry and pork to South Africa in two weeks’ time from Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina and Alabama, SA said bio-security protocols are in place.
While the technical aspects are still being negotiated, Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen had this to say about the process.
“It’s obviously difficult negotiating when the issues you’re negotiating are not only about trade and tariffs, and I think that’s why we’ve had this particular situation.”
The US administration previously demanded bee exemptions for us companies, including Elon Musk’s Starlink, and sought to sway some of the country’s foreign policy and domestic race laws demands SA maintains it won't concede to.