JOHANNESBURG—Zimbabwe, with its struggling economy and high rates of inflation, poverty, and unemployment, became the first country to drop tariffs on U.S. imports.
The move by Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who has been under heavy U.S. government sanctions for more than two decades as a key member of the China-friendly ZANU-PF regime, came three days after Trump imposed an 18 percent duty on the southern African nation’s goods entering the United States.
Mnangagwa, a former guerrilla who received military training in China in the 1960s, didn’t launch his usual anti-American bluster, insults, and accusations of neo-colonialism and imperialism.
Mnangagwa, who seized power from Robert Mugabe by coup in 2017, said Trump’s reciprocal tariffs held “merit,” specifically “as a tool for safeguarding domestic employment and industrial sectors.”
He added that his suspension of all levies on U.S. goods was “in the spirit of constructing a mutually beneficial and positive relationship with the United States of America, under the leadership of President Trump.”
Statistics from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative show that commerce between the world’s largest economy and Zimbabwe, rated Africa’s 17th-largest economy out of 54 countries by the World Bank, remains minimal.
In 2024, the United States exported almost $44 million worth of goods, mainly agricultural machinery, to Zimbabwe, while importing nearly $68 million in ferroalloys, tobacco, and sugar.
Mnangagwa said his tariff measure was intended to facilitate the expansion of American imports while simultaneously promoting the growth of Zimbabwean exports.
“This action underscores our commitment to a framework of equitable trade and enhanced bilateral cooperation,” he wrote in the April 5 X post.
Mnangagwa’s ZANU-PF party has been governing Zimbabwe uninterrupted since it gained independence from Britain in 1980, mainly because it rigged elections, according to the United Nations and other observers.
The World Bank has classified Zimbabwe as one of the poorest countries, as the political and business elite allegedly collude to profit almost exclusively from its extensive natural resources, including gold, platinum, diamonds, coal, and critical minerals such as chromium, nickel, and lithium, which are becoming increasingly important to the world’s future.
Trump has exempted gold and some critical minerals from import tariffs, as his administration considers them essential to American progress and national security. They are used to make a wide range of products, including cell phones, computers, electric vehicle batteries, and weapons such as missiles and fighter aircraft.
China has a near monopoly on the world’s rare earth minerals and metals, in large part due to its dominance in African extractive industries, including those in Zimbabwe.
Mnangagwa’s kind words following Trump’s April 2 announcement were a far cry from his hitherto regular calls for the downfall of the U.S. dollar and for the “hegemonic” West to suffer erosion at the hands of a “new world order” led by Beijing and Moscow, another close ally of Harare.
However, some financial experts warn that Mnangagwa’s scrapping of tariffs on American goods could further damage Zimbabwe’s economy and upset its two biggest trade partners, China and South Africa, both of which have invested heavily in the African country.
The country is heavily dependent on neighboring South Africa for most products, including food, its economy having melted down in the early 2000s after political violence and Mugabe’s seizure of white-owned farms.
“It’s unlikely that the U.S. will replace South Africa as Zimbabwe’s main trading partner,” Mohamad Razak, an economist at South Africa’s University of KwaZulu-Natal, told The Epoch Times, adding that South Africa would not be happy that Mnangagwa is ending tariffs on American imports.
“Zimbabwe taxes a lot of South African imported products, so Pretoria will expect it to stop these taxes and give it tariff-free access to its market as well.”
Razak said Zimbabwe’s economic partners across southern Africa—including Botswana, Angola, and Zambia—would also be “rather disappointed” in Mnangagwa’s “unilateral” approach.
“There’s a feeling that SADC [Southern African Development Community] should have decided on a common response to the tariffs, so that the interests of all countries are protected,” he said.
In response, Zimbabwean government spokesperson Nick Mangwana told The Epoch Times the country’s rulers have the right, as an elected administration, to make decisions in the “best interests” of its citizens.
Razak said Beijing, in particular, would feel “threatened” by Harare’s “cozying up” to the United States.
China has poured billions of dollars into Zimbabwe’s extractive industry in recent years and owns 90 percent of the country’s mines, according to a September 2024 study by the Harare-based Center for Natural Resource Governance.
Beijing’s ambassador in Harare, Zhou Ding, did not respond to requests for comment.
Gold has been Beijing’s chief focus so far, according to Zimbabwean independent economist Tapiwa Mupandawana.
But lately, Mupandawana told The Epoch Times, the Chinese have shifted their focus to lithium, described by geoscientists as one of the most important critical minerals.
Lithium is essential to the manufacturing of microchips, laptop computers, high-resolution display screens, and battery power sources.
Mupandawana said Chinese-built lithium mines are now prevalent across Zimbabwe, “with more springing up all the time.”
Harare claims that its experts have found the world’s largest known lithium deposit, at more than 11 million tonnes, with the potential to supply at least 20 percent of the globe’s lithium once all resources are fully utilized.
“I can think of lesser things than this to provide encouragement to the Americans to patch things up with Zimbabwe,” Booysen said.
She’s convinced that access to gold and critical minerals could form the basis of better relations between Harare and Washington.
“I think the Mnangagwa government sees the tariffs and Trump’s mercantile nature as a doorway to exactly this,” Booysen told The Epoch Times.
Winning mining and resource rights in Zimbabwe is “just one piece of the puzzle” that could enable the United States to break China’s stranglehold on rare earth minerals, while at the same time strengthening the U.S. economy and national security, Razak said.
But Kim Gundani, a business analyst in Harare, said U.S. sanctions are standing in the way of a rapprochement.
Washington has maintained sanctions on leading ZANU-PF figures and collaborators since 2003, when it accused the Mugabe government of torturing and killing political opponents and election fraud.
In March 2024, then-U.S. President Joe Biden announced a new set of sanctions specifically targeting Mnangagwa and 10 of his allies, including his wife and military commander, for a range of alleged crimes.
“Mnangagwa provides a protective shield to smugglers to operate in Zimbabwe and has directed Zimbabwean officials to facilitate the sale of gold and diamonds in illicit markets, taking bribes in exchange for his services. Mnangagwa also oversees Zimbabwe’s security services, which have violently repressed political opponents and civil society groups,” the statement reads.
The OFAC said the first lady of Zimbabwe, Auxillia Mnangagwa, “facilitates” her husband’s alleged crimes.
OFAC claimed Auxillia Mnangagwa “is responsible for or complicit in, or has directly or indirectly engaged in, corruption, including the misappropriation of state assets, the expropriation of private assets for personal gain, corruption related to government contracts or the extraction of natural resources, or bribery.”
The sanctions froze all assets owned by the Mnangagwas and their associates in the United States and prohibited American citizens and financial institutions from doing business with the sanctioned individuals and companies.
The government of Zimbabwe at the time described Washington’s measures as “inhumane” and “illegal.”
Booysen said the Trump administration seems “far more open to ending the freeze” between Washington and Harare.
“Mnangagwa clearly wants Trump to drop the sanctions just like [Mnangagwa] dropped tariffs on American imports, using the possibility of access to Zimbabwean resources as a carrot,” she said.
It criticized the Mnangagwa government for continuing to “use violence against peaceful protestors and civil society, as well as against labor leaders and members of the political opposition.”
The Bureau pointed out that Harare has made little progress in implementing the broad reforms needed for political and economic stability.
It said that American support for the people of Zimbabwe includes “holding accountable those Zimbabweans who use public resources for private gain and deny their fellow citizens fundamental freedoms,” according to the statement.
At the same time, though, the bureau said the United States “welcomes the opportunity to increase bilateral trade and investment with Zimbabwe that will benefit U.S. and Zimbabwean businesses alike.”
Booysen said previous administrations in Washington would “never have opened the door” to Zimbabwe to this extent.
“So it’s not beyond belief that one day soon the United States could have a big stake in Zimbabwe’s mineral sector, should certain things happen, and one of those would be to lift the sanctions on Mnangagwa and his associates,” she said.
“The Chinese will be angry should the United States enter what it considers to be [Beijing’s] market, but [Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s regime] is mercenary itself, so it shouldn’t complain much if this happens.”
