Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies has given an excellent summary of benefits to both the US and Africa in general, and South Africa in particular in The BusinessDay.
The newspaper also reported $14bn worth of company investments into Africa, all emanating from the developed US as a global superpower.
As a proud South African, it gives me great pleasure to remind all that South Africa is the giant at the forefront of stimulating growth in the US. South Africa is re-industrialising the US!
A single former apartheid South African company is doing all of the above by finalising its commitment to invest up to $21bn into the “developed” US. This giant South African petrochemical investment into the US will reindustrialise the US, make the US less dependent on fuel imports, make it less vulnerable to competitive dollar depreciation, and make the politically strong US even stronger.
Thus, when it comes to trade and industry relations between small South Africa and the US superpower, we may be proudly South African and not be too humble: a single South African company invests more into the US economy, strategic industry, fuel independence and associated sovereign power, than a lot of US companies combined do in South Africa.
Thus, the South African investment into the US, via the previously state-owned Sasol (40% of shares are still owned by the Industrial Development Corporation, the Public Investment Corporation and the Government Employees Pension Fund) is gigantic relative to those of the US companies alluded to in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) saga.
I thus predict that Agoa will be extended, South Africa included, because South Africa, via Sasol, is actually the Goliath in the industrial redevelopment and 4% economic growth rate of the US, where unemployment is low.
By Jacob Mouw