Trump's tariffs on South Africa threaten Texas' cowboy boot industry

The construct of iconic "made in the USA" rodeo rider boots is go down to meet from chair Donald Trump's 30 percent tariffs on South African exports due to come into force Friday.

Texas's most renowned makers of the southern US fashion staple source the ostrich leather they require exclusively from the small South African town of Oudtshoorn, 400 kilometres (250 miles) east of Cape Town.

Known as the world's "ostrich capital", Oudtshoorn is nestled in the semi-arid Little Karoo valley just inland from the southern coast,and is home to a few hundred thousand people and about as many of the giant flightless birds.

"We just don't know how bad the impact will be, but positive it wouldn't be," said ostrich farmer Laubscher Coetzee of the tariffs expected to kick in on August 1 after South Africa appeared unable to negotiate a new trade deal with Trump.

More than half of the global supply of ostrich-derived products -- from feathers to leather and meat -- comes from nearly 200 farmers around Oudtshoorn who are joined in the Cape Karoo International (CKI) group, said its managing director Francois de Wet.

South Africa as a whole supplies about 70 percent of the world's production, he said.

Luxury handbag manufacturers in France and Italy are among the CKI's main clients. It also ships 20 percent of its ostrich leather to top Texas bootmakers such as Lucchese, Justin and Rios of Mercedes.

Ostrich is "the best skin to build boots", according to Ryan Vaughan, CEO of the Rios of Mercedes manufacturer, which was set up in Texas in 1853.

"It moulds and forms to your foot. It is extremely durable. It has a lot of natural oils in it so you don't have to care for it very much," he said in a video posted in June.

Another iconic brand, Justin, boasts its celebrated boots are "made in USA with global parts".

And legendary bootmaker Lucchese told AFP that it had handmade its footwear in Texas for 141 years but had to "look beyond our borders for additional partners and raw materials as needed".

"At this time, we are still deciphering the impacts of the current tariffs on our products and production," it said in a statement.

De Wet from the CKI said he believed the South African supply of ostrich leather to the US manufacturers did not run counter to a push by the Trump administration for production to be brought home.

The United States did not have enough ostriches to provide the required leather, he said.

"We export the raw material, the ostrich leather. They can't produce it from local ostriches in the US. They don't have them," he told AFP.

"They do all the value-adding in the United States," he said. "So therefore, in terms of the pure definition of what the Trump administration would like to see, in this case, we do it already."

The soft skins, recognisable by spots left by the large ostrich feathers, are currently sold to American manufacturers for around $20 a square foot.

"We exported more than the usual volume of ostrich leather to the US in the past two-three months, so we have a little bit of a buffer," said de Wet.

"For the moment we don't expect any layoffs in the short term," he said. But "in the long term, if we have to pick up the full tariff, it will definitely ... Cause a shrinkage of our business."

The consumer could also not be expected to pay an extra 30 percent for the already pricey boots, he said.

"So the tariff will have to be split between the exporter... And the importer, and preferably also a part paid by the end consumer."

It is the unique climate of the Little Karoo, which gets less than 400 millimetres (nearly 16 inches) of rain a year, that makes it ideal for ostrich rearing, said Coetzee, a fourth-generation Oudtshoorn farmer.

"That is the reason the ostrich industry is still here 200 years after (it started)," he said.

His great-grandfather built the family home in 1896, when the price of ostrich feathers rivalled that of gold because of their value to the women's fashion industry.

The extravagant "ostrich palaces" of the time are a reminder of the industry's previous major crisis, when the market collapsed in the early 1900s as the arrival of the low-roofed motor car ended the fashion for high-feathered hats.

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