Recorded Tuesday 3 November 2026 for release 4 November 2026. Topics: MediRite correction, gold chart of the week, upcoming events, South Africa removed from AGOA — the real numbers, tariffs, winners and losers, the jobs fact check and the JSE angle.

Note: cleaned auto-transcript. Proper nouns corrected (Shyft, AGOA, MediRite, Jamieson Greer, Lady R, Simon’s Town, Citrusdal, Eskom, Cosatu, Malmesbury, Tulbagh, eThekwini, SADC, Mercosur, Zeder, Crookes Brothers, Libstar). Stutters and false starts removed; wording otherwise as spoken. Chapter times scaled to the 20:46 running time — approximate. Spoken figures are left as said; see the flags at the end.

0:00 Introduction

Simon Brown (00:02)
Worldwide Markets this week: AGOA is gone. What really are the numbers? Because there’s a lot of excitement out there, and most of it fake.

Hello and welcome to Worldwide Markets, episode 701, for 4 November. We are voting today — well, wherever you are, tomorrow — but I am recording this early afternoon on Tuesday, ahead of voting day. Worldwide Markets, powered by Standard Bank Global Markets Retail and Shyft, the global money app that puts travel, shopping, payments and investments in the palm of your hand. Enjoy the cheapest forex rates anytime, anywhere. Shyft, powered by Standard Bank. Thanks to Standard Bank, thanks to Shyft.

0:37 Correction: MediRite

Let’s start with a correction. Two weeks ago I was doing Shoprite and Boxer, and I referred to MediRite headline earnings sharply down. The Shoprite media peeps got hold of me, and I will quote you: “We just wanted to highlight that while MediRite is reported within the other operating segments category, where trading profit declined by 5.4%, sales from our pharmacy business — MediRite, MediRite Plus and Transpharm — increased by 9.4% [9.2%].” My bad. I don’t know where I got that number from, but I was wrong, and we have now corrected it.

1:12 Chart of the week: gold

So let’s have a look at our chart of the week, and it is a bleak chart, unfortunately. It is gold — to be very clear, it is gold. I hold gold, and I have been holding it for a while now. My gold holding, which I’m doing via GLD in rands in South Africa and GLD in dollars in the US, is a long-term holding. Much of it was initiated sub-$2,000. My last purchase was at $2,850, and that was in my wife’s account, and subsequent to that I haven’t bought more. I still hold some AngloGold Ashanti. I sold about half — no, in fact I think two-thirds — of the position, some of it at about 1,400, some of it at about 2,000. I’m still 3x up at current prices.

But the yellow metal itself is looking a little bit bleak. We’ve got a weekly chart, and to be clear, we’re two days into the week, but last week’s close was a new weekly low going back to October of last year. So pretty much a 52-week low for gold. This week we’ve seen a little bit of a bounce, but the bigger picture is we are getting lower highs and lower lows, and those are confirming.

I think gold is probably heading back to around the mid-3,000s. Certainly I think we’ve got good support around 3,200 to 3,400, and I would expect us to get to about that space. I would also expect it to perhaps take another year to get there. This is not going to happen all on Tuesday. But for now, the gold chart is weak, and we need to get comfortable with it. That’s where it is. That’s what it’s telling us. There’s no shaking those sticks. We can hate it, we can reject it, but gold is looking bleak.

The impact? Our miners are still making a killing. The average all-in sustaining cost — call it $2,000. They’ve got plenty of money to be making there, and they’re quite happy with that. They will make less profit, we will see smaller dividends, but certainly it’s not disappearing by any stretch of the imagination.

3:26 Upcoming events

As we rush towards the end of the year — what is it, 44 sleeps for me until my year is done, excluding naps; naps don’t count — two more events. One is 19 November: Shyft, a guided tour for investors and traders. And then 7 December is Position your portfolio for 2027.

The idea behind the Shyft one is that if you’re a Standard Bank Online Share Trading client at the moment, you have been or will be migrated to Shyft. There’s a lot of confusion and unhappiness, but park all of that for now. The point is it’s a new platform, and it’s actually a fairly chunky platform. It does a whole lot. But what does it do? Where do we find it? We’ll spend 45 minutes doing a highlight of that. That’s the 19th.

Then the 7th of December, Position your portfolio for 2027. This is the 14th year I’ve done this. I start by looking back at what I said a year ago, and I mark myself to keep everything honest. Then I look forward to what I expect to happen next year and how we should position portfolios.

Both of them at 5:30pm, both of them webcast or in person. If you want to catch the webcast, that’s fine. If you want to do in person, email MacDonald at Just One Lap, or go to justonelap.com/events for more information and booking.

4:57 AGOA is gone: what it was and why SA never fit

So: 26 years, 1,800 products duty-free, the scheme’s biggest-ever user, responsible for more than half of AGOA’s exports — and we got kicked out. That’s us. South Africa, we are done. Early on Monday night, the US — Jamieson Greer — announced it on Monday the 2nd: effective January, South Africa and Rwanda are out. Cheers, no more.

The headlines say disaster. Government says it’s 1% of our exports. Somebody’s numbers are wrong. And is it half a million job losses? Let’s go and dig. Let’s find the actual story — what’s really going to happen here with us being gone.

First, African Growth and Opportunity Act. That’s what it stands for. It goes all the way back to May 2000, and it gives sub-Saharan Africa one-way duty-free access. That’s the important point: Africa didn’t have to open its markets. It was just Africa exporting into the US. Signed by then-President Clinton. It was for low-income economies trying to build an export base. That wasn’t South Africa. South Africa is an industrialised, upper-middle-income economy, and we were 54% of AGOA’s exports over those 25 years. It wasn’t designed for us. Did we take the benefit of it? Absolutely. Did the auto industry love it? Make no mistake. But it wasn’t really designed for us.

Eligibility is reviewed every year: market economy, rule of law, barriers to US trade and investment, not undermining US foreign policy. As I say those criteria, you realise they have left room for politics. Absolutely for politics.

And we’ve been here before. 2015, 2016: the chicken wars. Then-President Barack Obama threatened suspension, and South Africa had to accept a quota of US chicken — I think it was bone-in chicken. So we’ve absolutely been here before. 2023, after the Lady R affair — remember Simon’s Town — and the naval drills with Russia and China, US lawmakers again called for our removal. This has been going on all the time.

And removal is routine. Ethiopia’s been out. Mali, Guinea, Uganda, Gabon — removal kind of happens. Of course, we are the anchor player here. We’re also the odd one out. We were not designed for this.

So has it outlived its purpose for South Africa? Our car industry has used it brilliantly for 20 years. But it was a unilateral gift — that was nice, but it can be withdrawn on a whim, and it always could be. And I remember, over the 20-plus years, the number of times there has been hype and hysteria and excitement about AGOA being over and it being the end of the world. And here it is. Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. We’ve got 60 days before 1 January to apparently have discussions.

7:51 The real numbers and the tariff maths

So what are the actual numbers? AGOA exports: about 4 billion in 2024, 1.7 billion last year, and probably less now. Why? Ah, tariffs. We’re currently paying 25% under Section 232 tariffs on cars that came in last year, which makes AGOA redundant, irrelevant, for the car industry. Is the car industry hurting? Yes, it is. But it’s not because AGOA is disappearing. It’s because Trump put a 25% tariff on us.

AGOA’s share of SA exports to the US was 28% in 2024. It dropped to 10% in 2025, which is about 1% of our global exports. That drop is a direct response to tariffs from Trump. So it’s about 1% of our global exports. 60 million a year — about 0.015% of GDP. That’s the back of a matchbox. It is small.

The Brookings Institution, January of this year, said losing AGOA would cost about 0.06% of GDP. That was modelled before tariffs and includes knock-on effects, so that’s probably the worst-case scenario. So not even 0.1% of GDP. Small. Absolutely small.

Our total bilateral trade is 28.8 billion, and we are talking about a tiny, tiny sliver — 1.7 billion to the US out of 28.8. It is minusculely small. This idea that we are going to die and lose half a million jobs is just not there. At a national level, it is a rounding error. Compare it to a quarter-percent rate increase. Compare it to R10 extra per litre on diesel and petrol. Compare it to the disasters of Eskom and Transnet, and no water in Johannesburg the day before an election — those are crises. This is hardly one.

At a town level, it gets different. Citrusdal — this is endgame for Citrusdal, but we’ll get into that.

So, the real tariffs. We’ve got a 12.5% blanket tariff, that’s the Section 301. We had the Liberation Day tariffs of 30%, then a temporary 10% global tariff for 150 days. Then on 24 July this year, the 12.5% Section 301s came in, and this is from a forced-labour investigation. We do business with people who might do business with people who use forced labour. Maybe we do — I’m sure we do. And also, we have labour laws. We absolutely have labour laws. Anyway, I spoke about this way back at the beginning of the year when Trump got nixed by the Supreme Court. I did a podcast and said this is how he gets around it, and it’s what he’s done.

There are exemptions from this 12.5%: critical minerals, some raw materials, oranges — oranges, weird — fruit juices and nuts.

So we lose AGOA. The normal tariff of around 3.4% comes in on those lines that are AGOA-covered, so we go from 12.5% to 15.9%. That’s about half of the 30% we had in 2025. I don’t want to say we survived that, because our exports to the US absolutely crated.

We’re already seeing 25% on vehicles and 25% to 50% on steel and aluminium. Those tariffs overrode AGOA, so losing it does nothing for our vehicle industry.

Outliers: edible ice. What is edible ice? Ice cream? I don’t know. Edible ice and sorbet — that’s now going to go to around 30%. Citrus other than oranges now gets duties on top of the 12.5%. So, some winners and losers.

11:40 Winners and losers

Losers: citrus — mandarins, lemons, grapefruit. The US took about 110,000 tonnes in 2023, about 9% of our exports, and those volumes had doubled since 2017. It’s about 35,000 jobs on the US market. And we compete head-to-head with Peru and Chile, who have free trade deals with the US and shorter shipping routes. Citrusdal is the poster child, and Citrusdal is in serious trouble.

Edible ice and sorbet is about 33 million of exports. If you are exporting edible ice or sorbet to the US, man, give me a shout, because I want to know, A, what’s edible ice, and B, I want to say well done to you. Well done to you.

Wine, grapes, raisins, deciduous fruit, berries — a bit of a hurt there. Light manufacturing and agro-processing — Atlantis, Malmesbury, Tulbagh — they’re going to be hurt. Not massive, but certainly some there.

Barely touched: platinum, other precious metals and minerals. About two-thirds of what we sold to the US was never AGOA-eligible, because they were minerals, and the US doesn’t want to hurt that at all. They are exempt. Platinum is completely, absolutely exempt. Cars, steel, aluminium — already behind Section 232 tariffs. Oranges, juices and macadamias are exempt. There we go.

The US takes about 4% of our agriculture — about 504 million in 2025. It’s not zero, let’s be very clear. I’m not saying it’s zero. It’s also not the end of the world.

This is very much around politics. As I said right up front, this was designed to really help not us but others, but we benefited. And then it’s a case of: well, if we don’t like you, we can bring some politics. I’m not going to go through all of it now — we get it. Some of these debates around chicken, pork and BEE predate Trump. Rwanda’s out because of sanctions over its alleged support for the M23 folks.

Was this preventable without giving up BEE? Probably not. Should South Africa give up BEE? Not because the US said so. Is there a debate to be had? Sure. Have the debate. We have Parliament, we have elections — have the debate. Do we bend the knee to foreign countries coming and saying “do this, or else”? No, no, no. That’s not how sovereignty works.

14:11 Pretoria’s response

So what is Pretoria’s response? The dtic put a release out late on Monday evening. “AGOA remains important, but does not constitute the totality of the economic relationship.” Fair enough. Tell us that.

But 89% of SA exports to the US already entered on ordinary WTO terms in 2025. “We offered concessions in 2020 and 2015, and now they’re raising new issues.” In other words, the goalposts have been moved. Sure they have. But this is politics. Goalposts move. Welcome to 2026.

Some red lines: government is saying BEE is not on the table. Bargaining chips? Twelve of the 50 US critical minerals, about 70% of US medical isotopes — hmm — come from us. What if we say, “Hey guys, we’re not going to sell you any of our minerals”? It would probably just get uglier.

Fun fact: about 600 US companies employ about 135,000 South Africans, and that includes the likes of Amazon and Microsoft and Meta. “This decision does not define the broader relationship. The solution depends on the willingness of both parties.” Hmm. In which case we’re off. If it’s the willingness of both parties, there is no willingness from either party.

15:23 Fact check: how many jobs?

So, how many jobs are at risk? I have seen the number more times than I can count that we are going to lose half a million jobs, and that is bogus. The number that keeps coming out is that losing AGOA is going to cost us between 125,000 and 576,000 jobs. So I went and sourced this information, so we can disprove both of them.

The first one comes from April 2025 — the 125,000 jobs. That’s actually the complete number of direct and indirect jobs dependent on our motor industry. Direct plus subcontractors: 125,000 jobs, if our motor industry were to shut down in its totality. Our motor industry is not shutting down in its totality. Not even close.

The 576,000 number comes from a Solidarity Research Institute count of jobs supported by all of SA’s exports to the US. In other words, if a company has any exports to the US, they include all its jobs. So by the Solidarity Research Institute’s thinking, if AGOA goes, that company is done and loses all its staff — which is nonsense, because maybe it wasn’t an AGOA export. Maybe US exports were 5% and the other 95% were going to eThekwini or Paris. Who knows? So the 125,000 number: bogus. The 576,000 number: bogus.

How many jobs are we going to lose? Well, let’s go and ask labour. Cosatu, the Congress of South African Trade Unions — who, to be clear, are no longer very friendly with the ANC after their last conference, and haven’t been friendly for quite some time — said in an interview on Moneyweb, published yesterday, the 2nd, that 3,000 to 10,000 jobs are at risk if we lose AGOA. Three to ten thousand jobs.

Now, let’s be very clear: we have an unemployment crisis on our hands, and every job absolutely matters. But 10,000 is about 0.1% added to our unemployment rate. This is not the bloodbath that everyone says.

17:35 What next: the 60 days and diversification

So now what happens? Sixty days. Reversal is unlikely. BEE is the red line. That’s not going to change. It’s not going to happen.

We need to diversify. We’ve got African free trade, we’ve got India, SADC, the EU, the UK, ASEAN, Mercosur, China, the Middle East — China’s very excited. There are lots of new places out there. The honest caveat is that diversification takes a while. A Citrusdal packhouse has a barn full of citrus that was going to the US. Now what? It can still go to the US, but it’s going to be more expensive. Okay, so we send it somewhere else — but not on a dime. That’s the trick.

So yes, we can solve for it over time. But in the immediate term, this is going to have some very real impact on some very real towns and communities. It’s not going to rock the country, but it’s going to decimate some communities — in many cases communities that absolutely can’t afford it.

18:35 The JSE angle and wrap

So who takes the hits? We’ve got Zeder — it’s got a bit of fruit and agri, not much left. Crookes Brothers — macadamias, but those are exempt. Libstar, RCL, Tiger Brands — minimal US. Wine — nothing really in the listed space at all. The PGMs are unaffected. Oceana has US operations, so that’s not an issue. Autos — no JSE-listed manufacturers, and the damage is already done. We’ve certainly got some auto stocks that are hurting — we’ve talked about them before — the OEM suppliers and the like.

So for investors on the JSE, this is pretty much a non-event. AGOA is gone, but the real number is closer to 600 million. It’s not 576,000 jobs. If you live in Citrusdal, I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do. We can all go and promise to buy more citrus, but that’s not going to solve the problem.

The key point is that this is not the end of the world that we’ve been promised it is. It is horrible, it is not fun, it is not nice, and it is going to hurt some communities a whole lot. And we would like to have kept it. Notwithstanding, we should never have been in that room. We were, we enjoyed it, it’s gone. We will survive. That is the key point. We will survive as a country and an economy, and we will get over it.

Worldwide Markets, powered by Standard Bank Global Markets Retail and Shyft, the global money app that puts travel, shopping, payments and investments in the palm of your hand. Enjoy the cheapest forex rates anytime, anywhere. Shyft, powered by Standard Bank. Thanks to Standard Bank, thanks to Shyft.

And we will leave it there for this week. Episode 701. My name is Simon. As always, we will chat again next week. If you’ve got particular stocks or sectors you want to hit on, let me know. Until then, look after yourself, and if you can, look after somebody else as well. Cheers, all.