The United States is South Africa’s second-biggest trading partner after China

International news via Reuters:

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa heads to the White House on Wednesday on a delicate mission to persuade U.S. President Donald Trump to make deals with his country rather than scold and punish it as he has done since the start of his second term.

Attacking South Africa’s land reform law aimed at redressing the injustices of apartheid and its genocide court case against Israel, Trump has cancelled aid to the country, expelled its ambassador and offered refuge to white minority Afrikaners based on racial discrimination claims Pretoria says are unfounded.

“Whether we like it or not, we are joined at the hip and we need to be talking to them,” Ramaphosa said on South African state television before flying to Washington to meet Trump.

The stakes are high for South Africa. The United States is its second-biggest trading partner after China, and the aid cut has already resulted in a drop in testing for HIV patients.

Ramaphosa will offer Trump a broad trade deal, said a spokesperson for the trade ministry, declining to give details.

For his part, Trump is likely to demand that U.S. companies are exempted from “racial requirements”, a White House official said.

South Africa has laws to compel businesses to hire and promote Black South Africans, including a requirement for large companies in some sectors, such as mining and telecommunications,  to have a 30% equity stake held by disadvantaged groups.

POLICIES AIM TO RESTORE RACIAL JUSTICE

Ramaphosa is unlikely to agree to weaken such rules, which are core to his government’s aspiration to restore racial justice after centuries of colonialism and apartheid.

“There’s political problems here that lie at the heart of the breakdown in the relationship,” said Joshua Meservey, senior fellow at conservative U.S. think tank the Hudson Institute, cautioning that deal-making may not be enough to overcome them.

Nevertheless, Ramaphosa plans to discuss opportunities for Tesla and Starlink, companies owned by Trump’s ally Elon Musk, who was born and raised in South Africa and has accused Ramaphosa of pursuing anti-white policies, which he rejects.

Discussions could include favourable tariffs for Tesla’s imports into South Africa in return for building electric vehicle charging stations, and licensing for Starlink, Ramaphosa’s spokesperson said.

GOLF CONNECTIONS

Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen, who is travelling with Ramaphosa, said he would work to secure South African farmers’ duty-free access to the U.S. market under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and to expand access.

AGOA is at risk from Trump’s tariff regime, which is currently suspended but would hit South Africa with a 30% duty if enacted.

“I believe that with enough drive and determination we can expand access and improve relations and this means greater opportunities for South African farmers and farmworkers,” Steenhuisen told Reuters by text message from Washington.

Trump has accused South Africa of seizing land from white farmers and of fuelling disproportionate violence against white landowners with “hateful rhetoric and government actions”.

Pretoria says these claims are inaccurate and “fail to recognise South Africa’s profound and painful history of colonialism and apartheid”.

Crime statistics show no evidence that white people are disproportionately targeted. A land reform law allows judicial challenges to any expropriation orders, which can only be issued in the public interest. No expropriation has taken place.

White people, who make up about 7% of South Africa’s population, are still richer than the Black majority by every economic measure and still own three quarters of the country’s freehold farmland.

Ramaphosa is an experienced negotiator, having headed the African National Congress’s team during the 1990s talks that led to apartheid’s peaceful end. He also built a successful investment vehicle before becoming president in 2018, and may be helped in his wooing of Trump by rich and powerful allies.

South African media reported that billionaire luxury goods tycoon Johann Rupert, the richest person in South Africa, and golfer Ernie Els have helped to bring about the meeting between Trump and Ramaphosa. Both have played golf with Trump.

Neither man responded to requests for comment.

Rupert, founder of the Richemont group which owns brands such as Cartier and Chloe, was quoted by News24 as saying he was very concerned about the potential loss of AGOA and its impact on jobs in his homeland.

Additional reporting by Siyanda Mthethwa and Tim Cocks in Johannesburg and Daphne Psaledakis in Washington; Writing by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Sharon Singleton

Critics say the Justice Department’s is openly moving against President Trump’s political rivals

International news via Reuters:

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating Democrat Andrew Cuomo, a leading candidate for mayor of New York City, over Republican allegations that he lied to Congress about what he did as New York governor during the coronavirus pandemic, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

The probe represents another example of what critics say is the Justice Department’s readiness to move against President Donald Trump’s political rivals. Trump, who has painted past legal cases against him as an improper political use of law enforcement, has in a number of instances called for probes of his foes.

Several people familiar with the matter confirmed the Cuomo investigation, which was first reported by the New York Times. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment. 

A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, said the campaign had not been informed of the probe. He accused Trump and the Justice Department of “lawfare and election interference plain and simple – something President Trump and his top Department of Justice officials say they are against.”

Cuomo resigned as governor in August 2021, when a report from state Attorney General Letitia James accused him of sexual harassment and other transgressions. Cuomo, 67, denies the allegations.

He is seen as the front-runner in the Democratic primary election for New York City mayor on June 24. The winner will challenge current Mayor Eric Adams, a former Democrat who is running as an independent. Adams was once the subject of a federal investigation, having been charged with bribery and fraud, but the charges against him were dropped after he embraced Trump policies on immigration.

Last year, a Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee had referred Cuomo to the Justice Department for possible prosecution based on closed-door testimony he gave to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, the Times reported.

“Governor Cuomo testified truthfully to the best of his recollection about events from four years earlier, and he offered to address any follow-up questions from the Subcommittee – but from the beginning this was all transparently political,” Azzopardi said in his statement.

Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington and Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, California; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Stephen Coates

Claims that Tren de Aragua is coordinating its U.S. activities with the Venezuelan government

International news via Reuters:

A top adviser to Tulsi Gabbard, the U.S. director of national intelligence, acknowledged in a March 24 email that the Venezuelan government may not have specifically directed the activities of a gang that the Trump administration has used to justify fast-tracking deportations of immigrants, but argued that a link between Caracas and the gang was “common sense.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has used a claim that Tren de Aragua is coordinating its U.S. activities with the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to justify deportations of alleged gang members to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. Some legal scholars have argued invoking the act requires a connection to a foreign government. 

In the email, according to a person familiar with the matter and confirmed by a second source, Gabbard’s acting chief of staff Joe Kent asked for a “rethink” of an intelligence assessment contradicting the administration’s argument that Venezuela is responsible for the U.S. activities of Tren de Aragua gang members.

“I would like to understand how any IC (intelligence community) element arrived at the conclusion that the Venezuelan government doesn’t support and did not orchestrate TDA operating in the U.S.,” Kent said in the email, referring to Tren de Aragua. 

“Flooding our nation with migrants and especially migrants who are part of a violent criminal gang is the action of a hostile nation even if the government of Venezuela isn’t specifically tasking or enabling TDA operations.”

He added that analysts needed to produce a new assessment on the gang that “reflects basic common sense.”

The New York Times was the first to report on Kent’s communications with the National Intelligence Council, the intelligence community’s highest analytical body. Reuters is the first to publish the contents of that email in detail. 

The exchange underscores the extent to which Kent, a former CIA officer, pushed Michael Collins, the head of the National Intelligence Council, and other DNI officials to redo their assessment, taking into account points that had previously been articulated publicly by Trump.

A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence called the timeline presented in this story “false and fabricated,” and called Kent “an American patriot who continues to honorably serve our country.”

“President Trump rightfully designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization based on intelligence assessments and, frankly, common sense,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. 

‘COMMON SENSE’

In his email, Kent argued that it would be logical for Venezuela, a U.S. adversary, to send gang members across the border, saying that any country seeking to harm the United States “would naturally take their bad actors and send them to our nation.”

“When Biden announced that the border was open I think we let a quest for … direct links between the Venezuelan government and TDA obstruct basic common sense,” he wrote, adding that the National Intelligence Council needed to start “looking at getting a new assessment written on TDA and their relationship with the government of Venezuela that reflects basic common sense.”

While Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden faced high levels of illegal immigration during his presidency, his administration also took steps to discourage illegal border crossings and encourage migrants to enter the U.S. legally.

In subsequent emails with ODNI officials, Kent also said that Gabbard needs to be “protected” in the rewriting process, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The New York Times late Tuesday reported that in one email, Kent ordered analysts to “do some rewriting” of the assessment and more analytical work so that “this document is not used against” Gabbard or Trump.

Kent’s emails were in response to a February National Intelligence Council assessment on the subject – one of at least two in recent months – that took into consideration analysis by agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency, the FBI and the National Security Agency.

The first was published internally Feb. 26 and made public via reporting by the New York Times in March. It said that the intelligence community did not find that the gang was controlled by the Venezuelan government. 

The second, published April 7 and made public earlier this month via the Freedom of Information Act, added more context and nuance but confirmed the intelligence community’s original assessment, two people familiar with the situation said.

Collins, the NIC chief, was removed from his post as acting chairman of the National Intelligence Council last week along with his vice chair, Maria Langan-Riekhof. 

It’s not clear who ordered the original intelligence assessment or why Trump later made statements that contradicted his own intelligence agencies’ findings. 

It’s common for the White House – under any administration – to ask its intelligence community to draw up reports on various national security matters.

Traditionally, intelligence agencies are tasked with producing assessments without political interference or bias so the president and his top national security officials can make more informed decisions. 

The removals have sparked consternation in the upper echelons of the intelligence community, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Both Collins and Langan-Riekhof have been accused publicly by ODNI for politicizing intelligence. 

But two people familiar with the situation said Kent pressured Collins to redo the initial intelligence assessment to more closely align with the administration’s public rhetoric. Collins, despite that request, held firm and instead supported the spy agencies’ original findings. 

“It’s clear that Collins got axed for just doing his job,” one former senior U.S. intelligence official said. “Collins is respected throughout the entire community and has a long history of working on tough problems with the highest of integrity.”

The people were granted anonymity so they could speak more freely about the internal deliberations surrounding the Tren de Aragua assessment.

Reporting by Erin Banco; Editing by Don Durfee, Deepa Babington and Saad Sayeed