JOHANNESBURG—Diplomats and officials from several leading African economies say the United States and China are pressuring them to make an “impossible choice,” as the superpowers fight a trade war that threatens to erode weak economies further.
Senior members of African governments, including those of South Africa, Egypt, Kenya and Nigeria, said Beijing has warned them it will retaliate against countries that sign trade agreements with the United States “at China’s expense.”
U.S. trade partners, including many from Africa, are currently negotiating with President Donald Trump’s administration following his global tariff announcement on April 2.
They’re trying to work out deals that could see the tariffs scrapped or lowered, depending on what they’re able to offer the White House.
Trump imposed some of the highest duties on African imports, ranging in some cases between 30 and 50 percent, arguing these are necessary to correct trade imbalances that take advantage of the United States.
He said the reciprocal tariffs will increase America’s competitive edge, protect its sovereignty, and strengthen its national and economic security.
But high taxes on their exports to the United States will cut billions of dollars from budgets already strained by high debt, inflation, the cost of industrializing, and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, said African nations.
Countries like Lesotho, hit with a tariff of 50 percent on its exports to the United States, which it said could destroy its textile industry, and South Africa (31 percent), have welcomed the chance to talk with the United States.
“But we know that if we do anything that is seen as appeasing Trump, it won’t go down well back east,” a government official in Pretoria told The Epoch Times, speaking anonymously because he didn’t have permission to speak with the media.
“We’re playing a delicate game here,” he said. “Because of Trump’s tariffs and the economic hardship they’re going to cause us, we’re trying to form new trade partnerships, but we know China is not going to be happy with some of those partnerships, especially if we move economically closer to their biggest enemy. Part of our strategy is to do even more trade with China, but then Trump is going to see that as a betrayal. We cannot win. It’s an impossible choice.”
Kenyan and Nigerian diplomats, who requested anonymity for the same reason, said Chinese officials had warned their governments not to give in to what Beijing has described as “bullying” by the Trump administration.
The Nigerian envoy told The Epoch Times that “the Chinese made it clear they expect Africans to be on their side” in this trade war.
“They said their government will strike back against anyone that signs anything with the United States that hurts [Beijing],” the Nigerian official said.
China’s Ministry of Commerce recently issued a statement in a vein similar to the comments made by the African officials.
“China firmly opposes any party reaching a deal at the expense of China’s interests,” the ministry said. “If this happens, China will never accept it and will resolutely take countermeasures in a reciprocal manner.”
Ina Gouws, political scientist at the University of Free State in South Africa, told The Epoch Times that China’s threat to retaliate has brought African countries to a “crossroads.”
“We now have the world’s two biggest economic powers involving the rest of the world, and particularly Africa, where China has held sway for decades, in their spectacular trade war,” she said. “What does Africa now do? It can’t please two masters. African countries cannot afford to lose trade with either America or China. They have always been adamant that they need trade with both. But Trump and [Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping] have forced them into a corner, and there seems to be no good way out of this for Africa.”
International relations analysts and trade experts said China is wary that the Trump administration will use tariffs, or threats thereof, to erode Beijing’s considerable power in Africa.
China is most African countries’ biggest trade partner by far.
According to the China Global South Project, based in Washington and Johannesburg, China-Africa trade reached $295 billion in 2024, a 6.1 percent increase from the previous year.
In 2024, U.S. total goods trade with Africa amounted to an estimated $71.6 billion, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). This included $32.1 billion in American goods exports to Africa, up 11.9 percent from 2023, and $39.5 billion in U.S. goods imports from Africa, up 1.9 percent from 2023.
The USTR said the U.S. goods trade deficit with Africa was $7.4 billion in 2024, a 26.4 percent decrease from 2023.
Ndiakhat Ngom, a foreign policy expert who leads the South-South Transatlantic Institute in Senegal, said American interest in Africa has so far been “overtly militaristic and aid-driven” and not of an economic nature.
“The U.S. has mostly used African countries as bases from which to attack terrorists. Sure, America invests quite a bit in the larger African economies where American multinationals have offices, and under [President Joe] Biden it showed more economic interest in Africa than ever before, but it is China that is seen as a reliable, consistent trade partner, not the U.S.,” he told The Epoch Times.
“Trump’s tariffs will mean the U.S. falls further behind China in Africa, at least from an economic point of view—unless African nations and the Trump government can come to arrangements that are good for Trump and for them.”
The White House has said it’s committed to trade that benefits both Africa and the United States.
Ngom said China’s reputation in Africa is “solid” largely because of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which has invested billions of dollars in infrastructure on the continent.
But China’s loans have come at a cost, leaving many countries heavily indebted to it.
The BRI enabled Beijing to capture what Lauren Paremoer, politics lecturer at the University of Cape Town, described as “the jewel in the crown” of what resource-rich Africa has to offer.
“Africans know that China and America want access to their critical minerals and precious metals, and that is true whether there is a trade war on or not,” she told The Epoch Times.
Paremoer said one of Beijing’s main objectives in Africa is to prevent its geopolitical rivals—especially the United States and “strong” European states including the United Kingdom, France, and Germany—from gaining extensive access to the continent’s critical minerals.
These are essential elements in many products, from computers to cell phones to electric vehicles. Minerals such as lithium and cobalt are also used extensively by the weapons industry.
China currently holds a near-monopoly over the world’s critical minerals, largely because of its many investments in African extractive industries.
This has left the United States facing shortages, with Trump making it a priority to ensure adequate supplies of the minerals for the United States far into the future.
Countries such as Congo and South Africa possess vast deposits of the rare earth elements and metals needed to ensure energy security in the future.
“The China Communist Party is frightened that enhanced trade between Africa and others, especially the United States, will eventually result in China losing out on Africa’s natural resources,” Fred Stanley, researcher at the Africa-China Centre for Policy Advisory, a research and policy think tank based in Ghana, told The Epoch Times.
He said this has been “China’s game in Africa for decades,” but Trump’s recent actions “may have changed all this inadvertently.”
“Trump’s tariffs and policies are forcing relationships to change. His actions may force Africa to have closer ties to some of China’s other geopolitical rivals, which will definitely undercut China’s investments. The stance of most African countries has always been that they want better trade with everyone, because they’re too poor to be picky about who they do business with. But this risks straining Africa’s close relations with Beijing, now that the chips are down because of Trump’s tariffs, among other things,” Stanley said.
Trump excluded critical minerals from his first round of “reciprocal” tariffs, but experts say the exemptions may not be enough to avoid supply shortages if China continues to place export controls on them.
Baba Musa, a Nigerian economic policy expert at the West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management, told The Epoch Times that African countries are keen to diversify trade and to “reduce dependency on China.”
“Africa should use its natural resources in its talks with the U.S.,” he said. “They must appeal to his nature to make deals. Their critical minerals and things like gold and platinum could be very important tools to negotiate relationships that are mutually beneficial. China must surely understand this and accept this as the way the cookie crumbles.”
Musa is convinced that Panama’s decision to exit the BRI under pressure from the Trump administration has “a lot to do” with Beijing’s recent attitudes.
“What Panama did has the Chinese worried, because if Panama can do that, so can others in developing parts of the world like Africa,” he explained.
Musa said Beijing wants to protect its status as Africa’s largest bilateral trading partner “at all costs.”
“There’s no doubt that if the Chinese retaliate against an African country that starts trading with Trump in a significant way, like if they slash investments or pull the plug on funding infrastructure, that country will be hurt,” he said. “African countries are caught between two superpowers and must now play a balancing act. They must calculate how much they can gain from the U.S. and how much they stand to lose from China should they surrender to Trump.”
Like it or not, he said, the trade war is going to shape Africa’s economic and geopolitical future, and will go a long way towards deciding whether the continent’s major powers swing west, or east.
“The middle ground no longer exists,” said Musa. “Trump has made sure of that.”
