Trading With The Enemy By Jason Hickel: Article Analysis

Since the enactment of the African Growth and Opportunity Act in 2000, there have been many that have had rather mixed feelings about the trade deal. Let’s take South Africa as an example. While some African business within South Africa that are involved in the both importing and exporting have expressed their delight in the trade deal by seeing it as an opportunity and taking advantage of it, there are some, especially within the poultry industry, that see the trade deal as a threat to the industry as a whole.
Why the difference in views? Why is the African Growth and Opportunity Act seen as an opportunity or advantage by one group and seen as a threat by another? With these difference of opinions, is the African Growth and Opportunity Act really beneficial for South Africa as a whole?

What is the African …show more content…
He further discusses how these policies, although they claim to ‘help’ Africa be all that it can be, and operate with a rhetoric focused on ‘partnership and development’, are quite misleading.
“…a quick look at the trade policy itself” Hickel says, “shows that this sugary rhetoric of American benevolence and concern for African welfare is deeply misleading. It does little more than cloak an agenda firmly rooted in economic realpolitik.”
This agenda was made know loud and clear by the former US Ambassador to the African Union, Michael Battle, in his Statement, “If we don’t invest on the African continent now, we will find that China and India have absorbed its resources without us, and we will wake up and wonder what happened to our golden opportunity of investment.”
“It’s all about staking a claim in the African continent’s enormous resource endowment….” - Jason Hickel