US President Donald Trump’s administration has signalled its intention to restart talks for a comprehensive trade agreement with Kenya, insisting a deal will inform negotiations with other African countries as the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) expires.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told Congress last week that a meeting with his Kenyan counterpart, Lee Kinyanjui, took place in Washington at the beginning of the month, laying the ground for the resumption of talks.
A trade agreement with Kenya, which would be the first US free trade deal in Sub-Saharan Africa, comes as governments around the world reeled from new tariffs imposed by Mr Trump, which sowed fears of a global trade war and recession.
Trade experts said the US tariffs were likely to signal the end of the Agoa, a US trade legislation passed in 2000 that allows duty-free exports for thousands of products from Africa, which expires in September and had been widely expected to be renewed in some form.
Mr Greer, who serves as Mr Trump’s principal adviser and negotiator on trade matters, termed the initial conversations with Mr Kinyanjui as “fruitful”.
“I had my counterpart and Trade minister from Kenya last week and we sat in my office and we had a good talk, and he said he said he wanted to engage with the United States. He understands our concerns, but he also understands the need to move forward,” Mr Greer told the Committee on Ways and Means of Congress.
“It was a very fruitful conversation and I look forward to speaking with him again. He wants to work with us, they want to have some kind of agreement.”
The congressional Committee on Ways and Means is the principal body in the House of Representatives that shapes laws on taxation, tariffs and other fiscal matters.
Mr Greer was responding to questions from the chairman of the Trade Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, Adrian Smith, on initiatives taken by the US Trade Representative (USTR) Office to ensure trade deals with Kenya and the United Kingdom progress to conclusion.
Mr Smith accused the previous administration of Joe Biden of dragging its feet on concluding trade negotiations initiated by Mr Trump during his first term in the White House.
Kenya opened negotiations for a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the first Trump administration in 2020.
The talks were discontinued by the Biden government in favour of the US-Kenya Strategic Trade and Investment Partnership (STIP) aimed at lifting non-tariff barriers to trade.
“During President Trump’s first term, he teed up agreements with the United Kingdom and Kenya. I am eager for these agreements to be brought to fruition,” Mr Smith said.
“Over the last four years, the Biden administration trade agenda veered from slow work to complacency to a non-binding framework.”
The Republican congressman added: “This [delay in concluding trade agreement] was particularly concerning given Kenya stood to set an example for other Agoa beneficiaries, which are capable of negotiating their own reciprocal agreements.”
The Biden-era STIP talks kicked off in July 2022, but a deal had not been struck by the time he left office, with the teams having covered eight rounds of negotiations as of last September.
Latest disclosures from the State Department for Trade indicate the negotiations under STIP were 50 percent done, missing the 2024 target for completion.
The STIP framework was focused on investment and inclusive growth, which was seen as having the potential to benefit workers and businesses in both countries.
This differed from the FTA framework initiated by the first Trump administration, which would have followed a comprehensive traditional market access route, covering areas such as rules of origin and reciprocal removal or reduction in tariffs.
STIP negotiations agenda centred on non-tariff trade issues such as liberalisation of agriculture, anti-corruption, digital trade, workers’ rights, environmental issues, cross-border trade facilitation and promoting the growth of small and medium enterprises.
The references to “reciprocal agreements” by Mr Smith and “our concerns” [that other countries were not offering reciprocal tariff concessions] by Mr Greer could be a pointer that the Trump administration is keen on restarting talks under a bilateral FTA.
The Biden administration had insisted that a bilateral trade deal under STIP between Kenya and the US was not aimed at graduating East Africa’s largest economy out of Agoa, signalling its intention to extend.
Mr Trump has, however, invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs in a bid to address “absence of reciprocity in our bilateral trade relationships”.
This has seen Kenyan goods entering the US, such as apparel, slapped with a 10 percent tariff.
African countries which were initially hardest hit by the US tariffs include Lesotho (50 percent), Madagascar (47 percent), Mauritius (40 percent), Botswana (37 percent) and South Africa (30 percent). Washington later paused tariffs above 10 percent for 90 days to allow negotiations, but excluded China, which imposed immediate retaliatory tariffs.
