United States senator John Kennedy has introduced a new bill to extend the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) for two years that would explicitly exclude South Africa. The bill was introduced to the US senate at the end of September when AGOA officially lapsed, bringing an end to the 25-year-old programme. The bill was tabled and sent to the Committee on Finance, with no further action yet taken. The US government was in shutdown for 43 days after it was tabled, and only recently got back to business.
Sam Busa