AGOA exports to the U.S. are heavily concentrated, with commodities and textiles (including finished apparel) coming from the 10 countries. South Africa is our biggest trade deficit in AGOA, accounting for most of the roughly $11 billion goods deficit with those countries.
The emerging compromise on Capitol Hill is clearly to “extend and reform.” This could include longer renewal periods and stronger eligibility criteria for manufactured goods.
AGOA is a vestige of the old Cold War era and the early 2000s heyday of globalization. We are in different times. Today, the U.S. is trying to rebuild domestic industry and maintain factory labor that can quickly upskill as workers of the factories of the future. Trade policy must support domestic production, manufacturing labor growth, and entice corporate investment at home instead of in countries with weaker countries, and weaker environmental and labor laws.
Programs like AGOA that provide unilateral duty-free access undermine domestic supply chain investments and conflict with the United States’ new industrial policy goals. Congress will have to tread carefully when reforming this program.
At CSIS, Sam Dupont, Senior Policy Advisor for Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) talked about “reciprocity” and “market access” – whereas reciprocal trade has become a Trump administration calling card and market access has long been the buzz word for agricultural exporting states like Nebraska. But he also mentioned alignment with U.S. security issues, saying that is already built into the AGOA statute, “but it has not been applied and not very clear.”
Coons’ comments can be considered another indicator that Congress will use AGOA as part of a national security narrative.
Bills like Coons’ AGOA Renewal and Improvement Act of 2024 propose the Act remain intact for 16 years (to 2041). Sen. James Risch (R-ID), current chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, co-sponsored that bill.
Others have sought three years, but short renewals of two years have prevailed lately to avoid lapses in the program. Advocates like Rep. Smith and Sen. Warnock are pushing multi-year terms, contrasting annual reviews of country eligibility.
“AGOA is key for countering threats to the U.S. posed by China and Russia’s growing presence on the African continent,” said Warnock. “I look forward to working with Chairman (Mike) Crapo and Ranking Member (Ron) Wyden, as well as Leaders (John) Thune and (Chuck) Schumer, to find a bipartisan path towards extension.”
Extending AGOA Beyond 2026? Bipartisan, Bicameral Support on Key Committees
The free trade, foreign policy apparatus on Capitol Hill is openly advocating for the extension of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), with senior committee leaders from both parties coming out in favor of it during a March 3 Center for Strategic and International Studies event about the trade deal’s future.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Trade, and Rep. Adrian Smith (R-NE-3), Chairman of the House Ways & Means’ agenda setting Subcommittee on Trade agreed that AGOA needs to be extended next year. Congress passed legislation (H.R. 7148) to extend the program in February in a consolidated appropriations bill. The program is set to end Dec. 31, 2026.
“AGOA has enjoyed bipartisan support and we have a real opportunity to build on the trade preferences program we have here. It is not a perfect program, but it is critical to the long term prosperity and stability of these nations. China, certainly, isn’t ceding any space there. It seems to be that we can ill afford to cede any more of that space. We need to authorize AGOA long term.”
– Sen. Rafael Warnock (D-GA), “The Future of AGOA: Building American Prosperity Through African Partnership,” CSIS, March 3, 2026
“I’m glad we have not let it fully lapse. This is a stepping stone to a longer-term AGOA. Trade is a difficult subject. But when you look at the dynamics across Africa, in things like critical minerals, this should bring more interest every day.”
– Rep. Adrian Smith (R-NE-3) at March 3 CSIS event
AGOA nations are not major destinations for manufactured goods, nor agricultural exports out of Georgia, nor is it a top destination for Nebraska agriculture. AGOA countries are also not major sources of imports for those states. But none of that matters. Politically, it will be difficult for elected officials not to extend AGOA, or even reform it. This is especially true given the ongoing framing that if we are not engaged heavily with those countries, China will continue to dominate the region economically.
AGOA Will Face Tariffs Until July
CPA’s position has remained that AGOA should not be renewed in January 2027. Renewing the program would extend duty-free tariff treatment to imports from 32 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, continuing a broad free-trade program that benefits neither the American nor African economies. A July 2025 report by CPA Senior Economist Andrew Rechenberg highlights some of the biggest problems with AGOA.
After 25 years, AGOA has not produced meaningful industrial development in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2024, 64% of AGOA imports—more than $18 billion—consisted of crude oil, minerals, and gold, reinforcing a resource-dependence trap rather than diversified manufacturing. AGOA’s structure reflects a flawed development model. Successful development requires building domestic markets and national manufacturing capacity, which generates higher-value production and sustained employment for African workers. By contrast, AGOA encourages export-oriented resource shipments to the U.S. market without fostering the domestic industrial ecosystems needed to support long-term economic growth in African economies.
AGOA preferential benefits include duty free trade, but due to the Section 232 tariffs – and now Section 122 tariffs – that were used to replace the IEEPA tariffs, AGOA goods are not duty free at the moment. The Section 122 tariffs expire in July.
To qualify for duty free, a good must be either wholly obtained (grown, fished, mined, etc.) or sufficiently manufactured in an AGOA country. Sufficiently manufactured, however, only means that 35% of the good’s value is added in the beneficiary country, with up to 15% of that value attributable to U.S. inputs.
Textiles Supply Chain, An Example
Florie Liser, President for the Corporate Council on Africa, made two interesting points at the CSIS event about the textiles trade relevant to content requirements. She said synthetic fabrics mostly come from China and warned that if AGOA apparel and fabric makers cannot use those fabrics, “that’s the end for them. You definitely don’t want to do something like banning third country fabric for man-made fabrics,” she said. She also gave the only example of how AGOA might work in the best case scenario. She said there are textile factories in Kenya that make clothes for the U.S. market. Some 80% of the cotton in those shirts comes from the U.S. That cotton is woven into yarn in AGOA countries, and then woven into fabric in a different AGOA country before it is turned into shirts in Kenya bound for the U.S. “This is the kind of regional supply chain that we would want AGOA to facilitate,” she said.
Of course it is thanks to trade deals like this that have facilitated the shrinking of domestic textile production, with Chinese textile inputs entering the U.S. market indirectly via AGOA countries.
As of 2024 data, the U.S. employs around 270,000 workers in textile mills (fabric production and apparel manufacturing combined). Textile fabric production (such as knitting, weaving, finishing) accounts for the majority, with roughly 140,000-150,000 jobs concentrated in states like North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina. In 2015, the U.S. employed over 500,000 workers across textile mills nationwide.
Forecast: Foreign Policy Interests Likely to Override Trade Concerns
That the conversation was held at CSIS is emblematic of where AGOA gets much of its support: it comes primarily from the foreign policy centers of Washington and developmental NGOs, and less so from American business. It is the foreign policy aspect of this that anchors the bipartisan support for AGOA.
John Hamre, the president of CSIS, one of Washington’s premier foreign policy think tanks, said he had never heard of AGOA. “AGOA was started over two decades ago and it had a really promising foundation. It started strong but it has been tapering off,” he said, then quickly pivoted to the main argument in Washington for extending AGOA beyond the Dec. 31, 2026 deadline, and that is that China “does twenty times the volume of trade there than the U.S.,” he said.
China now trades over $164 billion more with AGOA countries annually than the U.S. and is involved in over a third of all African port developments. Moreover, 29 of the 32 AGOA countries now participate in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Despite two decades of AGOA preferences, China—not the United States—has become the dominant economic partner across much of Africa.
However, concern over a China-heavy Africa will likely lead Congress and the Executive Branch to remain within the AGOA framework, albeit with reforms related primarily to what Washington can get from those nations as members of a new American security architecture in the region. Adhering to these arrangements will remain to be seen as China and Russia relations are just as important to these developing nations.
Some of the commercial interests include:
Sector
Main AGOA Countries
Notes
Automobiles & auto parts
South Africa
Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Ford production exported to U.S.
Crude oil & petroleum
Nigeria, Angola
Key AGOA import category
Apparel
Lesotho, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius
Factories often owned by China like Chongqing Shangcheng Apparel Group
Cocoa & cocoa products
Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana
Processed agricultural goods
Precious metals & minerals
South Africa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Platinum, cobalt, manganese
Macadamia nuts / specialty agriculture
Kenya, South Africa
Smaller niche export items
AGOA exports to the U.S. are heavily concentrated, with commodities and textiles (including finished apparel) coming from the 10 countries. South Africa is our biggest trade deficit in AGOA, accounting for most of the roughly $11 billion goods deficit with those countries.
The emerging compromise on Capitol Hill is clearly to “extend and reform.” This could include longer renewal periods and stronger eligibility criteria for manufactured goods.
AGOA is a vestige of the old Cold War era and the early 2000s heyday of globalization. We are in different times. Today, the U.S. is trying to rebuild domestic industry and maintain factory labor that can quickly upskill as workers of the factories of the future. Trade policy must support domestic production, manufacturing labor growth, and entice corporate investment at home instead of in countries with weaker countries, and weaker environmental and labor laws.
Programs like AGOA that provide unilateral duty-free access undermine domestic supply chain investments and conflict with the United States’ new industrial policy goals. Congress will have to tread carefully when reforming this program.
At CSIS, Sam Dupont, Senior Policy Advisor for Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) talked about “reciprocity” and “market access” – whereas reciprocal trade has become a Trump administration calling card and market access has long been the buzz word for agricultural exporting states like Nebraska. But he also mentioned alignment with U.S. security issues, saying that is already built into the AGOA statute, “but it has not been applied and not very clear.”
Coons’ comments can be considered another indicator that Congress will use AGOA as part of a national security narrative.
Bills like Coons’ AGOA Renewal and Improvement Act of 2024 propose the Act remain intact for 16 years (to 2041). Sen. James Risch (R-ID), current chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, co-sponsored that bill.
Others have sought three years, but short renewals of two years have prevailed lately to avoid lapses in the program. Advocates like Rep. Smith and Sen. Warnock are pushing multi-year terms, contrasting annual reviews of country eligibility.
“AGOA is key for countering threats to the U.S. posed by China and Russia’s growing presence on the African continent,” said Warnock. “I look forward to working with Chairman (Mike) Crapo and Ranking Member (Ron) Wyden, as well as Leaders (John) Thune and (Chuck) Schumer, to find a bipartisan path towards extension.”
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