China has scrapped all tariffs it had imposed on imports from 53 African countries. As U.S. President Donald Trump slaps successive high tariffs on Africa and even shuts down aid agencies, China is pulling Africa closer with a policy that is the exact opposite of the United States'.
According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on the 26th (local time), China began applying zero tariffs to all goods coming from 53 African countries starting on the 1st of this month. From this month, nearly 9,000 key export items, including premium wine from South Africa, sesame from Sudan, and wool from Lesotho, have been entering China without tariffs. Of Africa's 54 countries under United Nations (UN) criteria, only Eswatini, which maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan, was excluded.
China's state-run Xinhua News Agency said the move expands to the entire African continent the zero-tariff policy for 33 of Africa's least developed countries implemented in December 2024. The timing coincides with when President Trump in the United States secured a second term and signaled a resumption of the trade war with China. Chinese President Xi Jinping first raised the zero-tariff plan for least developed countries in a keynote speech at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit in Beijing in September 2024, two months before Trump's reelection became likely. It was then implemented for 33 least developed African countries starting Dec. 1, 2024, and expanded to all 53 countries in May this year.
By contrast, President Trump shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) immediately after taking office and left many U.S. ambassador posts in Africa vacant. When the United States announced a new reciprocal tariff policy in April last year, it newly imposed tariffs of 30% on South Africa, the continent's largest economy, and 15% on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a resource-rich nation. The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), created by the Clinton administration in 2000, expired last Sept. after 25 years and barely returned in February this year as a one-year extension. The law is a preferential program that allows sub-Saharan African countries to export more than 1,800 items to the United States tariff-free. South African Trade Minister Parks Tau criticized the temporary AGOA extension, saying it "perpetuates uncertainty and dampens long-term investment."
At the same time, President Trump argued that the Nigerian government fails to protect Christians from Islamist militants and that the South African government is carrying out "genocide" against the white minority. Ronak Gopaldas, a director at the African political risk firm Signal Risk, told the WSJ it was a "politically astute" decision, adding, "This tariff removal contrasts with America's capricious and predatory posture. It strengthens the perception of China as a stable and reliable African partner."
The zero-tariff move is helping cement China's position in supply chains for key minerals used in electric vehicles and semiconductors, such as cobalt, copper and coltan. Kenya's Deputy President Kithure Kindiki said at a Nairobi business forum in March that the zero-tariff pact with China gave Kenya a chance to narrow its trade deficit with China of about $4 billion (about 6 trillion won). He cited coffee, tea, macadamias and avocados as representative beneficiaries. These are also items the United States mainly buys from Africa. According to Kenya's Daily Nation, more than half of last year's exports to the United States were macadamias, coffee, titanium ore and black tea, three-quarters of which received AGOA tariff-free benefits. However, with President Trump imposing a 10% reciprocal tariff on Kenyan imports starting last April and AGOA's future becoming uncertain with year-by-year extensions, it has become more advantageous for Kenya to sell the same items to the Chinese market tariff-free.
In particular, on raw material supply lines, Africa has already tilted toward China over the United States. Even though Africa is geographically distant from China, it effectively serves as a backyard for resources. As of 2025, Africa's exports to China amounted to $73 billion (about 109.7 trillion won) in mineral products, $26 billion (about 39 trillion won) in metals and $14 billion (about 21 trillion won) in precious metals. In the same year, exports to the United States were around $11 billion (about 16.5 trillion won) in minerals and about $12 billion (about 18 trillion won) in precious metals. According to Chinese government data, China-Africa trade in 2024 reached a record $295.6 billion (about 444 trillion won). That was roughly three times the $100 billion (about 150 trillion won) in U.S.-Africa trade in the same year.
Former Lesotho Trade Minister Mokhethi Shelile said, "If Lesotho invests in production capacity, increases local processing and improves logistics to build competitive industries, the Chinese market will be a key growth engine," adding, "If not, the benefits could be trapped in primary commodity exports." Lesotho is a country whose textile industry was hit hard last year by President Trump's high tariffs of up to 50%. The Institute for Security Studies (ISS), a South African think tank, said in a report this month that "China's zero-tariff decision is closer to a geopolitical signal," analyzing that it "will reinforce the existing pattern in which African countries already deeply embedded in China's supply chains, such as Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia and South Africa, reap the benefits."