U.S. plans talks with Kenya on trade deal

Move seen as step to counter China’s influence in Africa.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has announced it would begin talks for a free-trade deal with Kenya, a step partly designed to counter China’s influence in Africa.

The deal, likely to require months of negotiations, would be the United States’ first trade pact with a sub-Saharan African nation and its second with an African country. It signed an agreement with Morocco in 2004.

Though the agreement could help some farmers and other industries sell into and invest in Kenya, it is unlikely to have much influence on the U.S. economy overall. Kenya is the United States’ 98th-largest trading partner in goods, with $1 billion in two-way trade in 2018, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative. Kenya’s biggest U.S. imports include aircraft, machinery and agricultural goods; the United States buys Kenyan apparel, tree nuts and coffee.

But the Trump administration and other officials in Washington see the move partly in geopolitical terms, believing it could provide a model for other trade deals with African countries and be a step toward countering China’s growing influence on the continent.

President Donald Trump welcomed Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, to the White House on Thursday to discuss the plan. When a reporter asked if he planned to sign a trade agreement with Kenya, Trump responded, “Probably.”

At the U.S. Chamber of Commerce later in the afternoon, during an event sponsored by Uber and other companies, Kenyatta said the agreement “will not only serve Kenya and the United States, but will probably set the base for renewed engagement between the United States and other African countries.”