IMAGINE an alternative future if you will. A future in which our country instead of wedding itself to BRICS maintained its focus on leading the African continent — the BRICS bloc is really nothing more than a proxy for China’s controversial ‘belt and road’ initiative. Formed on 9 July 2002, the African Union was meant to emulate a similar unification progress in Europe, which has resulted in the current European Union.
While the African Union to its credit, introduced continent-wide open markets, politically, it has been slow off the bat, with very little clout, considered nothing more than a talk-shop successor the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) by the rest of the world.
Instead of an AU century, BRICS took center stage, alongside the Trumpian drama of dedollarisation and US trade deficits.
Cut to the events of the past weeks in which the USA and EU signed what has been touted as the ‘biggest trade deal in history’, setting a 15% tariff ceiling on most EU exports to the US.
Instead of being sidelined alongside the Iranian ‘Axis of Resistance’, and other authoritarian regimes considered unpalatable by the West, President Ramaphosa could have been announcing a bold pact, to emulate the EU, worth billions.
That’s is only if he was able to get the AU to act as an actual economic bloc, instead of embroiling the country in what has turned out to be a costly distraction in the aftermath of the demise of AGOA, a piece of legislation which it turns out, had a sell-by-date, the least of which is that it was the political successor to a comprehensive sanctions package against apartheid.
AGOA, which scrapped US tariffs post-1994, was a literal godsend — a gift from the US congress for which the US got very little in return. SA has consistently opposed USA foreign policy at the UN. So when Trump arrived at the second presidency, an administration in which the tariff big stick have become a hallmark policy, it was dead on arrival as they say.
Ramaphosa missed the 4IR
Watching Ramaphosa touring a local German car manufacturer, whilst muttering about ‘multipolarity’ in the face of the 4IR Electric Vehicle revolution, is like watching a slow-motion train wreck — not only have we tied out fortunes to unprofitable ICE engines, we are playing a losing game. Nobody in China is going to buy South African manufactured German sedans in the foreseeable future.
The only reason these manufacturers were here to begin with, was because relocation to South Africa resulted in zero US tariffs for being part of AGOA
That tying our nation’s fortunes to BRICS is an exercise in futility can be seen by the way our government has announced that it is only now opening a local trade mission to ‘assist business’ with what Pretoria called a ‘trade pivot’. Yes, that’s right, as if BRICS was not in itself an economic ‘pivot’ decades in the making, it seems nobody in Luthuli House has bothered to do the maths.
For all the talk of a ‘multi-polar’ world, expecting local businesses to suddenly pivot from selling goods to the USA, to selling knickknacks to China, Brazil, India and other partners in the BRICS alliance, may make for interesting political rhetoric, but it belies the notion upon which China’s own economy has been built.
The “Factory to the World’ is dependent upon the customs of Western consumers.