JOHANNESBURG - The era of a single, dominant trading partner is over according to President Cyril Ramaphosa, as US import tariffs of 30 percent kicked in.
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Ramaphosa says exporting companies must diversify their supply networks.
"The whole process of, dealing with countries on a trade, basis requires that we should be multidimensional.
We should not just focus on one country, and we've been encouraging our companies, to look out to export their products to various markets because it is too risky just to focus on one market.
And so we are going to go all out to support our companies, to seek out other markets.
And when I travel overseas, I usually take a business delegation so that they can go and search for new markets wherever we go.
And the same thing happens with the deputy president and other ministers as well.
So for us to grow our economy, we need to be much more vigorous and robust, with our international trade, and it must be as international as the word international means, meaning that we need to seek out many, many markets.
There are quite a number of countries that we need to reach out to, countries that want to deal with us, that want to trade with us.
And this moment, gives us that opportunity, so we are going to be much more vigorous," he said.
Director and Chief Economist of the Efficient Group, Dawie Roodt discussed what this means for the economic outlook of the country.
CBI electric Engineering Executive Dr Andrew Dickson discussed what this means for local manufacturers and exporters with eNCA.