US President Donald Trump said America would stop sending aid to South Africa over its land expropriation policies, sparking a selloff in the rand.
“The United States won’t stand for it, we will act,” Trump said in a Sunday evening post on Truth Social. “Also, I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed!”
Trump’s comments come less than two weeks after President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a new law making it easier for the state to expropriate land, subject to equitable compensation paid.
The ANC has pushed to make it easier for the state to take land in an effort to address racially skewed land-ownership patterns dating back to colonial and white-minority rule.
The rand slid nearly 2% against the dollar in early Asia trading on Trump’s comments.
Trump has threatened South Africa with economic punishments before. The country is the ‘S’ in the Brics bloc of nations, which Trump in December threatened with a 100% tariff if the group moved away from using the US dollar.
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South Africa holds the chairmanship of the G-20 this year and Trump, as US president, would be expected to attend. His top billionaire backer, Elon Musk, was born in the country. — Derek Wallbank, (c) 2025 Bloomberg LP
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