BN Edge | Donald MacKay unpacks the bureaucratic black hole in SA trade

A tariff investigation in South Africa is meant to take six months. Donald MacKay, whose XA Global Trade Advisors released its latest import duty report this week, told Alec Hogg the average had stretched to 40 months, and that the oldest open case was old enough to start school. He explained why the International Trade Administration Commission was only part of the problem, how a groundnut processor gave up waiting and shut its factory, and why ArcelorMittal had become the most protected company in the country while the businesses downstream paid for it. He was also unusually calm about losing AGOA, called Washington's demands badly delivered but not irrational, and warned that secret deals attached to tariff decisions created exactly the conditions where corruption could take root, though he stressed he had no evidence it had.