For apparel companies sourcing from sub-Saharan Africa, the looming expiration of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is more than a policy question—it’s a business risk they’re being forced to navigate in real time.
The question on the table now is whether the trade preference program will be renewed before its Sept. 30 expiration. While some in the industry are hopeful, they know the realities of an American Administration more focused on what the U.S. can get rather than provide, may render the agreement low on the priority list.
“I don’t think it’s going to get renewed in time,” said Gail Strickler, president for global trade at Brookfield Associates and former assistant U.S. Trade Representative for textiles. “Both Haiti [HOPE/HELP] and AGOA are due for renewal. They both expire at the end of September and I think it’s an absolute tragedy for the United States to ever let it come down to even the last year. It should be renewed years in advance.”
Lesotho, for one, had long been enjoying free trade for its textile products under AGOA until threats of a 50 percent tariff came in April—the mention alone of which drove U.S. brands to kill orders and left thousands out of work—turning things upside down for the country. After diamonds, textiles are Lesotho’s biggest export and per OTEXA data, under AGOA, the nation’s textile exports alone, to the U.S. alone, accounted for roughly 7 percent of its GDP last year. The U.S. ultimately agreed to a 15 percent tariff on Lesotho at the end of July, but much of the damage was already done.
Given that Lesotho wasn’t in breach of AGOA and could still be subject to that level of extra tariff, whether actualized or not, as Strickler noted, makes even a renewed AGOA mean little if President Trump decides to levy an unprompted tariff punishment.
Last year, U.S. imports across all categories under AGOA totaled $9.7 billion, down from $10.2 billion in 2023, according to the United States Trade Representative. Of that, $1.19 billion were textile and apparel imports, nearly 5 percent down year over year.
In its current form, AGOA allows 32 eligible sub-Saharan African countries duty free access to the U.S. market for more than 1,800 products. The goal of it was to use trade to promote economic development. AGOA’s initial authorization in 2000 was set to expire in 2007, but Congress was proactive and, in 2004, renewed it until 2015. In 2015, the renewal came three months ahead of the expiration date. Now, we’re down to the wire.
And the uncertainty surrounding AGOA has already shifted sentiments around sourcing there. In the latest annual United States Fashion Industry Association (USFIA) Benchmarking Study released at the end of July, more than 70 percent of respondents said securing AGOA for at least another 10 years is essential for them to commit to new investments in the region. In the last year, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Mauritius and Tanzania were the key countries U.S. fashion companies sourced from, and none of these countries were used by more than 20 percent of respondents. As much as 30 percent of those surveyed said they’ve already reduced sourcing from AGOA member countries because of the agreement’s questionable renewal.
In Kenya, more than 80,000 people, most of them women, are directly employed by textile and apparel companies in Kenya, with more than twice as many more indirectly reliant on the industry, according to IDH.
“To try to sell the idea that the U.S. has to help African countries without reciprocity is gone, and I think gone for long.”
—JC Mazingue, Africa Coalition for Trade
For its part, the National Retail Federation has been working to encourage Congress to renew AGOA as quickly as possible, but as NRF vice president of supply chain and customs policy Jonathan Gold explained, there will be a lot on the agenda when Congress returns in September. Budgets and trying to avoid a government shutdown will be on the to-do list amid AGOA, Haiti and GSP.
“If AGOA does lapse, those trade preferences go away and, thereby, the tariffs will increase on those products just as we’re looking at the additional retaliatory or reciprocal tariffs that can be put in place, too,” Gold said. “That’s going to stack those tariffs on top of each other, which can be a significant hit for many companies that are trying to do the right thing and trying to diversify away from China.”
Even a crystal ball could be fuzzy on what happens next.
“Nobody knows what’s going to happen from now up to September,” said JC Mazingue, board member for the Africa Coalition for Trade (ACT) and founder of Echotex. “Each week, delegations from different countries are coming to Washington having a discussion. Some are agreeing on what’s called a framework, but that’s it. And many are just going back home scratching their head and wondering, ‘What are we going to do now?’
Among those making the trip to Washington was Ghana’s Minister for Trade, Agribusiness and Industry, Elizabeth Ofosu-Adjare, who said in a meeting in June, according to local publication Norvan Reports, “AGOA remains a win-win platform. It has deepened U.S.-Africa trade relations and enabled Ghanaian manufacturers to expand production and create jobs.”
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) called AGOA “critical,” in a written appeal shared to its Facebook page in July, adding that “600 American companies invested in South Africa and 500,000 South African jobs” resulted.
For Mazingue, who has been involved with AGOA over its 25-year life span, one thing has become increasingly clear.
“The time of assistance to African countries by the U.S. in terms of USAID is gone. To try to sell the idea that the U.S. has to help African countries without reciprocity is gone, and I think gone for long,” he added. “In the current shape and form, AGOA will not be renewed. AGOA has to evolve…[and] within that, we are not only speaking about aid, we’re talking about exports, imports, investments and projects. So that’s the future if there is one.”
How we got here
In the early days of AGOA, things went well and more or less according to the agreement’s intent. Then global quotas ended, contributing to some stagnation in trade with the region, so the U.S. agreed to install a handful of hubs on the continent designed to inform African countries and exporters about AGOA. There was investment—beyond the financial—in the preference program succeeding and benefiting economies in the region.
Drawing on the saying, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime,” Strickler said the idea of great trade is that you teach a man—or, in this case, a country—to be really efficient at fishing, then he can supply you with fish on a regular basis. And with that exchange, he can then buy things from you and create a long-term strategy for mutual investment and benefit. But something like that needs momentum; it cannot be sustainable for the arrangement to lapse every five or 10 years.
“If you ever really did want to get serious about helping countries to evolve into long standing trade partnership agreements, you need to find a way to go from preference program to free trade agreements,” Strickler said. “That’s the only way you’re ever going to see two-way trade really start to pay off, and not just be a one way, unilateral preference program that puts food on the table for a few years for a few people.”
Now, however, there seem to be fewer in decision-making seats prepared to fight for AGOA’s progress.
“AGOA is not a preference program in the true sense of the word. It’s a law. It is a legislation run by Congress and voted by Congress. So technically, the President of the United States has little to do with AGOA,” Mazingue explained. “But in real life, in July 2025, the Speaker of the House has made it very clear he will not put any new AGOA legislation on the desk if it has not been approved by the president.”
As Strickler added, “Congress has the right to make trade policy, yet they have allowed this unprovoked behavior, including things like threatening a 50 percent tariff on Lesotho, to happen without doing anything about it.”
What’s to be done about it?
AGOA is a make-or-break kind of game changer for sourcing in Africa.
It’s not the most investor-friendly place to go, said Eugene Havemann, vice business director of apparel manufacturer Handa Group, where he’s focused on production in Egypt. Before that, he owned and operated Madagascar Garments, where he said AGOA was critically important for bringing business to the continent. “There’s a lot of risk involved, so that risk has to be mitigated by some kind of reward,” he said, “And the AGOA duty free was the only option that gave you a bit of an advantage.”
Manufacturing in Africa means added logistics costs and timelines and, even barring 2025’s superfluous tariffs, sourcing in the region can only really be price competitive with AGOA in place.
“Our members want to continue to look at Africa as a sourcing destination,” Gold said. “They built great relationships, and this is why maintaining AGOA and building upon that program is so important. That’s why we need Congress to step in now and make sure that the program does get renewed, because we know once these kinds of preference programs expire, it’s extremely difficult to get them renewed. There’s a long history of that happening. And the challenge is, if it expires and folks move away, they’re not going to quickly move back because of the uncertainty as to when that program could get renewed.”
What Mazingue thinks the agreement needs to survive is reinvention, something he believes most can agree on. What he’s concerned about, however, is the whole thing getting tossed because someone decides it’s easier to build it anew than to fix what’s existing. The time that would likely take is long enough for buyers to leave.
“You can redefine it, you can amend it, you can extend it for a long period or a short period. But to throw everything away would be a bad decision for everybody, including the U.S.,” he said.
Trade, as Gold put it, “is the lifeblood of the retail industry,” and AGOA is a cornerstone.
“We need the ability to source products on a global scale to provide consumers the best variety in value when they walk into the store or they buy something online,” he said. “Supporting programs like AGOA and Haiti HOPE are important for us, but so is having ongoing conversations about the current tariffs and the impact tariffs have on U.S. importers and consumers. We would love to see new, true free trade agreements that are negotiated that will open up markets and lower tariffs and be approved by Congress, but that’s not the path this administration is taking, unfortunately.”
