This story has significance for readers across Kenya and beyond.
Kenyan factories shipped 148 million pieces of apparel to the United States in 2025, a 27.6 percent jump in volume. Yet the money that came back fell, export earnings, dropped 4.1 percent to Sh58.1 billion, according to the Economic Survey 2026. Kenya's exporters are working harder and earning less for it, and the reason has little to do with tariffs.
That gap between volume and value is the real Agoa story for 2026, and it is a warning most boardrooms have not yet priced in.
The African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) expired on September 30, 2025. President Trump's retroactive extension, signed on February 3, 2026, restored duty-free treatment through December 31,2026, but only after a lapse that briefly pushed Kenya's trade-weighted tariff on apparel from roughly 10 percent toward 28 percent, and after South Africa's vehicle exports to the US fell by as much as 55–80 percent during comparable disruption.
Congress has since moved to lock in a longer runway: the House passed a three-year extension to 31st December 2028 in January 2026, and the Senate passed its own version in August 2026, though the bill still needs to be reconciled between the two chambers and signed by the President before it becomes law. A 25-year-old assumption that preferential US market access is simply available no longer holds, even with a longer extension now in prospect.
Most commentary has focused on whether tariffs return. That is the wrong question. The right one is whether the commercial arrangements built during a quarter-century of assumed access can survive a world where that assumption is gone.
Three exposures deserve attention. The first is pricing. Kenyan exporters in tea, coffee, horticulture, and apparel routinely sign fixed-price contracts months ahead of delivery, priced against duty-free access. Few contain tariff-adjustment or hardship clauses. When policy shifts, the exporter absorbs a cost nobody budgeted for.
The second is shipping terms. Duty-free access made customs exposure commercially irrelevant, so many Kenyan exporters shipped FOB or DAP, leaving import obligations with the US buyer.
A less certain Agoa environment gives US buyers reason to push for Delivered Duty Paid terms instead, shifting customs clearance, duties and border-delay costs onto the Kenyan exporter. What reads as a routine logistics clause in an old contract can become a material liability in a new one.
The third is compliance. US buyers are asking for firmer warranties on labour standards, traceability and supply-chain governance, hard commitments for exporters sourcing through networks of smallholder growers and cooperatives, which describes much of Kenya's coffee, tea, avocado and macadamia trade. A breach several tiers down the chain can now surface as an indemnity claim at the top.
None of this is captured by asking whether Agoa survives to 2028. It is captured by asking whether the paper Kenyan exporters signed in 2022 or 2023 still reflects the world they are trading in.
Exporters and SME manufacturers need support to get ahead of this shift, revisiting supply and finance agreements before a shifting US trade posture turns them into liabilities: export contracts silent on tariff pass-through, bank facilities collateralised against margins that compliance costs are now eroding.
The clients moving fastest are the ones renegotiating shipping terms and hardship clauses now, while the extension still gives them room to do it on their own timeline, not on a buyer's.
Contract review should not wait for Washington's next move. Exporters should audit existing US-facing agreements for tariff-adjustment and hardship provisions, revisit shipping-term assumptions before the next renegotiation cycle, and get ahead of compliance warranties rather than accepting them unread.
The Agoa extension currently in force buys time only until December 31,2026; a further extension to December 31, 2028 has now passed both chambers of Congress but is not yet signed into law. Whichever date ultimately holds, it does not buy protection for contracts that were never built to withstand Agoa's absence.
For 25 years, Kenyan exporters could reasonably ask only one question: how do we get into the US market? The more urgent question now is what happens to the deals already signed if the terms of that access keep changing. Exporters who answer it this year will be negotiating from strength.
Those who wait will be renegotiating from a position dictated by someone else.
Reporting originally appeared via Business Daily. Read the full source for additional context.