On July 16, 2008, the United States and the five member countries of the SACU - Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Swaziland - signed a Trade, Investment, and Development Cooperative Agreement (TIDCA).
The TIDCA establishes a forum for consultative discussions, cooperative work, and possible agreements on a wide range of trade issues, with a special focus on customs and trade facilitation, technical barriers to trade, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, and trade and investment promotion.
The TIDCA is designed to build on and potentially capture some of the progress made in the FTA negotiations between the United States and SACU, which were suspended in 2006, largely due to divergent views on the scope and level of ambition for an FTA. Ideally, the TIDCA will help to put in place the "building blocks" for a future FTA, which remains a longer-term objective for both the United States and SACU.
The five SACU countries together are the United States' largest non-oil trading partner in sub-Saharan Africa, with two-way trade valued at $18.2 billion in 2008.
The SACU countries are key beneficiaries of AGOA and GSP, with U.S.-AGOA/GSP imports valued at $4.0 billion in the first 11 months of 2008, an increase of 68 percent over the corresponding period in 2007.
SACU countries also comprise the largest U.S. export market in sub-Saharan Africa, with $6.9 billion in U.S. exports in the 2008, 19 percent more than in 2007.
