U.S. Curbs Cut S. Africa Exports by $417 Million, Senate Panel Told

U.S. trade sanctions imposed against South Africa two years ago cut that nation’s exports by about $417 million, a loss Pretoria was unable to recover by directing trade to other countries, a Senate panel was told Friday.

A senior official from the General Accounting Office testified to the Foreign Relations Committee that South Africa suffered a second blow when it lost additional trade to 19 other major trading partners, resulting in a total trade reduction of $624 million in goods sanctioned by the United States.

“I think the bottom line, in shorthand, is that sanctions are working in terms of economic impact,” said Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), a member of the panel. “What we cannot know is whether this will result in a policy change by South Africa.”

Allan I. Mendelowitz, an associate director of the GAO’s international division, said that since the enactment of the sanctions over President Reagan’s veto in 1986, South Africa experienced sharp losses in exports of coal, iron and steel, uranium and textiles.

The testimony came as the committee concluded three days of public hearings on legislation to make sanctions against white minority-led South Africa far more severe to force the government to abandon its apartheid policies. The bill would require a near-total trade embargo and order all U.S. companies to withdraw from the country.

Mendelowitz said that since 1984, 162 U.S. companies have withdrawn from South Africa and that nine of the 150 companies remaining have announced their intention to leave.

Opponents of the new sanctions have raised the possibility South Africa might retaliate by cutting off exports to the United States of certain strategic minerals.

Mendelowitz noted that the U.S. Bureau of Mines reported there are sufficient alternative sources of supply for manganese, chromium, palladium, titanium and vanadium but not for platinum and rhodium.

However, he also cited the bureau’s conclusion that the five-year total economic cost for South Africa in lost sales for six strategic minerals under a more severe trade embargo would amount to $9.25 billion, or $1.85 billion a year.