If American rooibos fans are paying a little more for their health-giving elixir this week, it is further proof, if any were needed, that US President Donald Trump’s 30% tariffs on South Africa have got nothing to do with trade and everything to do with punishing a country he doesn’t like.
The rooibos industry is planning to appeal to the US embassy in Pretoria to exclude the tea from the tariffs, or at least tax it at a much lower rate, making arguments based on logic — South Africa is the only place where rooibos is grown, so there is no US agri-industry to protect; the volumes involved are negligible; and the process of blending and packaging the tea in the US creates jobs and revenue there.
“Over 90% of rooibos exported to the US is shipped in bulk and then blended, packaged and marketed by American companies, allowing for value addition and job creation within the US market,” a spokesperson for the South African Rooibos Council (SARC), Marthane Swart, tells the FM. “The US rooibos industry has benefited from a stable supply of this natural resource for decades.”
But logic will cut little ice with the Trump administration, says Prof Phiwo Mnyandu, assistant director of the Center for African Studies at Howard University in Washington.
If it was about free trade alone, junta-run Zimbabwe and the family stokvel of Equatorial Guinea would not be sitting at 15%
— Prof Phiwo Mnyandu
“Appeals to reason are a waste of time because they are premised on the myth that this is about free trade,” he says. “If it was about free trade alone, junta-run Zimbabwe and the family stokvel of Equatorial Guinea would not be sitting at 15%. This is about geostrategic smoke South Africa is catching for being in the middle of some serious conflicts between the US and various other countries … Rooibos doesn’t matter much.”
What does matter, Mnyandu says, is the genocide case against Israel, the ANC’s close ties with Iran and South Africa’s membership of Brics, one of Trump’s least favourite international alliances.
“The tariffs on South Africa are ideological and punitive … It’s unfair, but it is what it is. South Africa needs to reckon with this,” he says.
SARC chair Dawie de Villiers says it’s too early to tell what the impact of the tariffs will be on the industry, which employs about 8,000 people.
“Obviously it can’t have a positive effect … [But] if they shut off the US completely, all the exports to the US, it’s not going to cripple the South African industry by any stretch,” De Villiers tells the FM.
Over the past decade Japan has consistently been the top export market for rooibos, taking 21,153t in that period, or 26% of shipments. Germany is second at 15,167t or 19%, and the US comes in fifth at 4,360t or 5%. Far more rooibos is exported than is consumed locally — total exports grew from 6,552t in 2013 to 9,760t in 2024, while tannies on the stoep and other South Africans brewed about 7,500t of Laager, Eleven O’Clock and other brands in 2024.
De Villiers says the US market is notable for the way importers use rooibos as only one ingredient in a blend of flavourings and other botanical components.
“So the price of rooibos might have gone up 30% but it is in a blend, sometimes with domestic products from the US, which won’t be subject to tariffs. Then you add on paper for teabags, and any foil packaging, and the cardboard carton, and the overwrap of that carton, and the cost of packing and distribution, then that really softens the actual cost of a 30% tariff increase on rooibos,” he says.
“It disappears into a myriad of other things. By the time it hits the shelf, that 30% increase translates into a relatively small price increase.”
De Villiers says consumers in the US are not demanding pure rooibos tea per se — they are buying a blend that is marketed as a beverage “that’s good for gut health or whatever, and rooibos is a 20% or 30% component”.
“Which is very different to how it’s consumed in other markets, like Japan, where it’s consumed in its pure form and for its intrinsic value. That’s obviously far more desirable because you’re not at the whim of some guy who’s making a blend and then tweaking that blend to reach a cost objective.”
The consumer in Japan, he says, is drinking rooibos for its health properties and taste, and the Japanese don’t adulterate it.
And those health properties are legion. The SARC says rooibos’s benefits include helping with hypertension, cardiovascular function, stress and diabetes. Two separate studies are now under way into its possible contribution to preventing Alzheimer’s, the council says.
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