Will Trump’s policies cost South Africa billions?

The jeering response of much of the commentariat worldwide to Donald Trump’s inauguration has been something to behold.

Aside from a few predictably conservative opinion writers, the tone has been relentlessly hostile and sneering.

Of course, their dismay is not entirely unjustified.

For the next four years, the still most politically consequential country in the world will be led – barring a divinely hurled lightning bolt or a more capable assassin than the two who’ve tried so far – by a capricious narcissist with an exaggerated opinion of his own and his country’s power.

In SA, concern revolves around what cost we might have to pay for a foreign policy which has consistently acted to damage the interests of the Western bloc in support of Russia, China and Iran.

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The government of national unity (GNU) is putting a great deal of store in the same things that the National Party government thought would make it immune to Western pressure: SA’s strategically important geographic position and its bountiful supplies of economically vital minerals.

The African Growth and Opportunity Act, under which SA annually exports to the US vehicles, motor parts, agricultural products and textiles valued at close to $3 billion (about R55 bullion) may very well survive.

However, it’s less likely that the money the US has pledged to SA’s Just Energy Transition Partnership – $1 billion of the $8.5 billion package – will be forthcoming.

This week, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, President Cyril Ramaphosa brushed off these concerns.

He told reporters SA enjoyed good relations with the US, its second-largest trading partner after China, and he and Trump would work closely to address climate financing and other issues. ‘‘President Trump is a great dealmaker and so am I.”

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Ramaphosa shouldn’t be too sanguine.

While transactional realpolitik may cause the Trump administration to cut the GNU some slack, there are limits. The one issue that won’t be up for negotiation is SA’s anti-Israel foreign policy.

It is not going to suffice, as our new ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, said to just “put away the megaphone” on Gaza and Israel for a while. It’s not that simple. This is where the Trump hammer is going to fall. And the costs will be staggering.

A high court filing last week estimated the cost to the University of Cape Town (UCT) of its academic boycott of Israel to be at least R700 million.

The supplementary affidavit is part of Prof Adam Mendelsohn’s ongoing application to set aside a resolution passed by UCT’s council in June last year, forbidding staff from any relationship with “any research group and/or network” in which any participant has ties with the Israeli Defence Force of “the broader Israeli military establishment”.

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Mendelsohn’s affidavit highlights only one aspect of the anti-Israel Boycott Disinvest Sanction movement’s activities in SA, the loss of donations. Potentially as damaging, is the loss of grants from the US government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH).

In 2024, UCT got about R250 million from the NIH for infectious diseases research, mainly for work on HIV/Aids and tuberculosis. It’s been estimated almost two-thirds of UCT’s health science posts are dependent on these NIH grants.

The ANC is operating under the delusion that Trump, who cannot seek another term, is a temporary inconvenience.

That is to misread the situation. Trump’s election is one of the most seismic political events since World War II because it will fundamentally change the way that the US interacts with its allies, as well as its enemies, long after Trump is gone.

The US is going to play hard and rough, as UCT and SA may be about to discover.

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