Top 5 on Fin24: Financial fallout from Trump's land tweet, and Nugent inquiry wants to hear about consultancy's work at SARS

Cape Town - A roundup of Thursday's top economic and finance reads on Fin24.

Trump tweet raises fears that US could punish SA

US President Donald Trump waded into South Africa’s racially charged debate about land reform, triggering a selloff in the rand, although the currency strengthened later in the day. 

Trump said in a tweet that he’s asked US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to "closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations".

He was intervening in an ongoing debate about whether South Africa should implement a policy of seizing land without paying for it in a bid to address inequalities built up during apartheid and colonial rule.

• READ: Trump tweet raises fears that US could punish SA

Meanwhile, Minister of Communications Nomvula Mokonyane told reporters in Cape Town on Thursday she has no reason to believe South Africa's benefits in the United States' African Growth and Opportunity Act, or AGOA, were at risk, despite Trump's tweet. 

Agricultural industry body Agbiz rejected Trump’s tweet, saying the US president doesn’t know what goes on in South Africa. “In the critical time that we are in now, we don’t need volatile statements like that,” Agbiz chairperson Francois Strydom told fin24.

Bain must answer to its role at SARS, Nugent Inquiry hears

The Nugent Commission of Inquiry wants Bain & Company to answer for its role in formulating SARS's controversial operating model.

The model, implemented in 2015 under now suspended commissioner Tom Moyane, has been described by several SARS executives in their testimony as hampering revenue collection.Judge Robert Nugent, who is heading the probe, has raised concerns about what exactly the model was meant to achieve, saying the consulting firm would have to answer to that when they give evidence next week.

• READ: Bain must answer to its role at SARS, Nugent Inquiry hears

Want to educate your child overseas? Start saving - a lot

South African students wanting to further their education may think the average minimum cost of local university tuition is steep at around R35 000 per year, but that's before taking a look at the eye-watering costs of studying overseas.

• READ: Want to educate your child overseas? Start saving - a lot

Loans from China are no Faustian bargain, says Ramaphosa

President Cyril Ramaphosa insisted that South Africa did not make a Faustian bargain with China when it secured loans from the fellow-BRICS nation for state owned companies Eskom and Transnet.

The parliamentary question that got the conversation going came from African National Congress MP Amos Mahlalela, who asked how BRICS could protect SA’s interests in the midst of what is threatening to become a fully-fledged trade war between China and the United States of America.

• READ: Loans from China are no Faustian bargain, says President Cyril Ramaphosa

WATCH: US China impose new tariffs on each other as talks resume

The US and China imposed fresh tariffs on each other’s goods in the middle of trade talks aimed at averting the worsening conflict between the world’s two biggest economies.

Both nations started levying the previously announced taxes on $16bn of imports from the other country shortly after noon Beijing time. China also said it would lodge a complaint about the new American tariffs to the World Trade Organisation, according to a Chinese Ministry of Commerce statement on its website.

• READ: US China impose new tariffs on each other as talks resume

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