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    Africa: Trump’s Bullying Shows Signs of Backfiring

    OneAfricaYTBy No Comments6 Mins Read
    Africa: Trump's Bullying Shows Signs of Backfiring

    India defies US President Donald Trump’s bullying; will African countries do the same?

    Are United States (US) President Donald Trump’s attempts to bludgeon the world into submission with massive tariffs starting to backfire?

    This question arose after the cosy meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping at this week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin, China.

    At the summit three years ago, Putin was implicitly rebuked by Xi and Modi for his invasion of Ukraine. Other leaders seemed to ignore him. This week in Tianjin, Putin unashamedly blamed the West for the war in Ukraine, chortling as he held hands with Modi, and all three leaders beamed.


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    ‘The elephant in the room was President Trump, who has helped end Mr. Putin’s isolation, both by welcoming him to US soil for the first time in a decade (for a summit in Alaska) and by clashing with leaders from Brazil, India and South Africa, pushing them closer to Mr. Putin,’ New York Times thought.

    Trump has slapped 50% tariffs on Indian imports both to pressure Modi to stop buying Russian oil and – supposedly – as punishment for refusing to credit him with brokering an end to his brief war with Pakistan in May.

    But Modi has been defiant. According to Reuters he will increase his Russian oil purchases. And Modi’s chummy meeting with Putin in Tianjin clearly showed Trump that India had other options and wouldn’t be bullied.

    It was interesting too that New York Times thought Trump’s bullying was also pushing South Africa closer to Putin. Strained South Africa-US relations have seen Trump cut aid to South Africa and impose 30% tariffs as punishment for various domestic policies. Trump and the Republican Party in Congress also don’t like South Africa’s closeness to China, Russia and Iran, and especially its hostility to Israel.

    President Cyril Ramaphosa has tried hard to straddle the divide and maintain relations with the US. But signs of fatigue are showing. Last month, South Africa’s defence force chief visited Tehran and expressed political solidarity with Iran. And South Africa’s military announced a joint exercise with Russia and China in November, as Ramaphosa hosts the G20 summit. On Thursday, the exercise was postponed, presumably on Ramaphosa’s instructions.

    But he’s apparently struggling to keep the African National Congress’s hardliners in the tent. Many feel that with a trade offer having gone unanswered by the US Trade Representative for several weeks now, South Africa should seek partners elsewhere. Such an outcome was the concern of Joe Biden’s administration and remains so of other Western governments, but apparently not of Trump.

    Meanwhile, Xi is seizing the opening created by Trump. In June this year, Xi offered zero-tariff access to the Chinese market for imports from the 53 African countries that recognise China (that is, all but Eswatini).

    China’s ambassador to South Africa, Wu Peng, recently presented the concession as a response to ‘unilateralism, protectionism and economic bullying … in particular the US arbitrary tariff hike,’ which he said had dealt an especially harsh blow to Africa.

    Although Africa’s exporters still face non-tariff barriers like phytosanitary regulations, China’s abolition of tariffs will be a boon to middle-income countries like South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya. Least developed countries already enjoyed duty-free access to the Chinese market.

    Xi’s offer seems a shrewd geopolitical move, as China is diverting a substantial part of its exports from the US – where they now face higher tariffs – to Africa. So far in 2025, exports from China to Africa total more than for the whole of 2020, and their value is set to exceed US$200 billion for the first time. So the net result of Trump’s tariffs is likely a widening of China’s already large trade surplus with Africa.

    Still, Xi’s gesture ‘reinforces China’s narrative as a reliable and equitable partner for the [global south],’ Linda Calabrese wrote for London-based think tank ODI Global in July, contrasting it with Western and especially US protectionism.

    Russia lacks the economic muscle to match China’s generous gesture to Africa. Nevertheless, in June, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declared that Russia’s presence in Africa was ‘growing’ – primarily in investments and other economic interaction but also in defence and security.

    And Russia is intensifying its propaganda in Africa, expanding the number of Sputnik and RT bureaus on the continent and pushing its message through several front organisations and paid influencers. Cameron Hudson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has lamented that Russia is intensifying its propaganda war in Africa, just as Trump is shutting down Voice of America.

    Russia is clearly filling power vacuums, both militarily and otherwise, left by the US and other Western powers in the Sahel and elsewhere. But that ambition has its problems, certainly on the military side.

    According to The Sentry, the Russian military company Wagner – Moscow’s spearhead in parts of Africa – has failed in one of its key battleground states in the fight against jihadists and separatists in Mali. The Sentry warned Mali’s neighbours Niger and Burkina Faso, which are also friendly to Russia, not to make the same mistake of inviting in Wagner or its successor, Africa Corps.