April 2025

29 April 2025 – President Donald Trump’s tariff war is expected to cut global container volume by 1% in 2025, Drewry said, only the third such forecast in its history. That would amount to approximately 1.8 million twenty-foot equivalent units based on worldwide container traffic of 183.2 million TEUs in 2024, and approximately 10% of […]

23 April 2025 – Despite US President Donald Trump reversing 30% tariffs on South African exports, Washington’s trade war with China will likely spill over to the rest of the world, and billions of rands worth of trade hangs in the balance. Sitting on top of this pile is the potential and increasingly likely loss

22 April 2025 – South Africa’s central bank has warned that the country’s economy could contract by nearly 0.7% if a key trade agreement with the United States, the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), is revoked – a likely scenario if US tariffs are imposed causing the rand to weaken. This bleak projection, outlined

16 April 2025 – After surging by +10% in 2024, our Global Insolvency index is set to rise by +6% in 2025 and +3% in 2026 as the delayed easing of interest rates and increased uncertainties keep companies under pressure.  The number of business insolvencies rebounded in four out of five countries in 2024. The

15 April 2025 – Amid escalating trade tensions between the United States and China, the World Trade Organization has made a preliminary projection suggesting that merchandise trade between these two economies could decrease by as much as 80%. “This tit-for-tat approach between the world’s two largest economies — whose bilateral trade accounts for roughly 3%

11 April 2025 – South Africa was not spared of the “Liberation Day” tariffs announced by US President Trump against various countries. South Africa will face tariffs between 10% and 30% in the US for all products. The specificity of by-products is not yet clear. We know now that a baseline tariff of 10% will apply to

9 April 2025 – Inflation and monetary policy: limited scope for rate cuts Reflecting on South Africa’s inflation trends, Chaudhuri, Chief Africa Economist for Coface, noted that “South Africa had a quite important disinflation process, especially in the second half of 2024. Now inflation is well below the target midpoint of 4.5%, and it is expected to

7 April 2025 – The tariffs introduced by President Donald Trump represent a seismic shift in global trade dynamics, both in geographical reach and economic weight, Peter Sand of Xeneta has said. According to the market intelligence resource’s chief shipping analyst, last week’s unprecedented trade developments in the US are poised to redefine global commerce,

3 April 2025 – The US has imposed a 30% tariff on certain South African goods imported into the country as part of President Donald Trump’s strategy of imposing reciprocal tariffs. Trump said his tariffs are slated to impact at least 60 countries, and he calculated each individual country’s tariff rate by imposing half of

2 April 2025 – South African logistics companies and importers selling into the rest of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) should be planning for major shifts in trade f lows due to improved port, rail and road infrastructure in the region, advises Duncan Bonnett, director of Africa House South Africa. South Africa is “losing