Congressional leaders upset about Africa’s growing ties to China are considering a rewrite of US trade policy to force the continent to choose between America and its main rival.

The House Ways and Means Committee launched hearings on the future of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) on 12 June with repeated warnings that countries that challenge US national interests could be expelled from the programme. The cornerstone of US trade policy towards Africa for the past 24 years will expire next year unless Congress renews it.

The Republican-led panel advanced legislation along party lines back in April that would renew the expired General System of Preferences (GSP) trade programme while adding a provision to kick out any country that is “deepening its economic, diplomatic, and military relations” with China.

At this week’s hearing, Committee Chairman Jason Smith said the panel should take the same approach with AGOA, which is built on the GSP but goes further in offering duty-free access to the American market for qualifying countries.

“We also need to use our trade tools to counter the malign influence of countries like China and Russia,” the Missouri Republican said.

“Earlier this year, the Ways and Means Committee approved trade reforms to counter China’s growing military and economic influence around the world… Those same reforms should be reflected in a reauthorization of AGOA,” he added.

Risky gambit

The rationale: Forced to pick between the US and China, most African nations will choose access to the vast US market and American rule of law.

But experts warn that the world has changed dramatically since AGOA was first enacted under President Bill Clinton in 2000 – and not in America’s favour. Today, China is by far the continent’s preferred trading partner, beating out the US by a factor of five, and the gap is only growing.

“China’s engagement with African countries has dramatically increased in the past decade,” testified Daniel Runde, a former US Agency for International Development (USAID) official now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank in Washington.

“Fifty-two of the 54 African countries have signed on to Belt and Road,” he added. “China has invested at least 2.5 times as much in African infrastructure as the entire Western world. The Chinese have ownership of 23 ports or control of 23 ports in Africa. China is consolidating global influence over mining, including in Africa,” says Runde.

One key advantage for Beijing: Unlike the United States, China – along with Russia – doesn’t force Africans to pick sides, something Africans overwhelmingly reject as a colonial mindset.

“The only country that penalises African countries for their choice of partners is the United States,” Cameron Hudson, a former State Department official also with CSIS, tells The Africa Report. “We’re the only ones that lecture countries on who their partners are, and why their partners aren’t us.”

South Africa pokes the bear

Driving lawmakers’ efforts to try to leverage AGOA is their growing irritation with South Africa in particular.

Last year, key foreign affairs leaders of both parties threatened to kick the country out of the programme after Pretoria hosted naval exercises with the Russian and Chinese navies and stood accused of supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Then, in December, the country filed a complaint against Israel for its attack on Gaza at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

“I think they’re undermining our foreign policy,” said Nebraska Republican Adrian Smith, the chairman of the Ways and Means trade subcommittee.

“I’m very, very concerned about that. And I think this is an opportunity for us to look further in modernising how we handle AGOA moving forward.”

Runde, however, advised against forcing the US into binary choices.

“I understand the temptation to use AGOA as a stick,” he told Smith. “I’m trying to resist that temptation.”

Instead, he recommended creating new options – such as those in a bipartisan renewal bill introduced in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – as a helpful alternative.

That bill would offer the executive branch options beyond full termination, including partial termination for certain products, putting countries on notice if they don’t make changes in the coming year, or taking no action if US interests are better served that way.

“I think we need a menu of options, whether it’s formal warnings, probationary periods, and partial termination of benefits,” Runde said. “Also, a lot of the sectors that are more pro-West, including agriculture and others that are beneficiaries of AGOA in South Africa, would be unduly punished for the actions of the South African government if we were to use this as a stick.”

AGOA in trouble?

The hearing comes as Ways and Means lawmakers are preparing for a congressional delegation to Kenya, Tanzania, The Gambia, and Cabo Verde later this week where AGOA is likely to come up.

It also comes one week after the Senate Finance Committee opened its own reauthorisation debate. In the upper chamber, it is labour complaints over trade adjustment assistance for displaced US workers that is raising concerns that the program could be in jeopardy.

“Failure to renew AGOA would be a strategic disaster for the United States,” Runde said. “Champagne corks will pop in Beijing […] Our African partners will be enormously disappointed with us. And fairly to pass AGOA means that American business will be disadvantaged in Africa.”