GIULIETTA TALEVI: How Trump’s WeChat ban is squeezing SA’s pensions
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Donald Trump’s anti-China exertions may seem a world away but, unfortunately, they will likely have an effect on every single South African pensioner or investor, simply because of the importance of Naspers to our local market.
If you haven’t been following the news, the US has set its sights on Chinese tech champion Tencent last week — of which Naspers owns 31% — and to which the SA company owes its incredible stock market success of the last 19 years.
Essentially, the Trump administration announced it would bar “people and property within US jurisdictions” from carrying out “transactions” with WeChat ( and TikTok ( – two Chinese-owned apps, after 45 days. Naspers immediately felt the heat, its stock falling 4.1% on the JSE last Friday, before recovering part of that.
Quite how concerned we should be is still unclear since, like most things Trump, it’s all a bit of a muddle.
The White House hasn’t actually said what those transactions may be, and in this story (, the Financial Times argues that “banning WeChat, an app that is central to the lives of a billion Chinese users, would have a heavy impact not just on China’s second most valuable tech company, but also on swathes of US companies.”
It’s a delicate gamble — and it may all be over in a few months if the election in November swings against Trump anyway. But in the meantime, Trumpian Sinophobia may have a bearing on SA’s most valuable company.
Or not — if the market chooses instead to focus on Tencent’s results. Tencent’s latest numbers (for the three months to the end of June), out yesterday were, quite simply, spectacular.
The company — whose tentacles are basically in every facet of Chinese life, from messaging to mobile payments to gaming — beat expectations by clocking up 114.8bn yuan ($16.5bn) in sales, a 29% rise year-on-year. Its profit came to 33.1bn yuan ($4.7bn) — a 37% year-on-year rise.
In fact, Bloomberg argues here ( that Trump’s ban is unlikely to harm Tencent’s business within China, where of course it is most dominant.
Which is good news — even if it’s unclear right now how this will play out, and just how much of a threat Trump’s ban presents to your pension savings.
The trouble ahead for gold
In the meantime, if you’re thinking of other places to put investments, our colleague Joan Muller ...
If you haven’t been following the news, the US has set its sights on Chinese tech champion Tencent last week — of which Naspers owns 31% — and to which the SA company owes its incredible stock market success of the last 19 years.
Essentially, the Trump administration announced it would bar “people and property within US jurisdictions” from carrying out “transactions” with WeChat ( and TikTok ( – two Chinese-owned apps, after 45 days. Naspers immediately felt the heat, its stock falling 4.1% on the JSE last Friday, before recovering part of that.
Quite how concerned we should be is still unclear since, like most things Trump, it’s all a bit of a muddle.
The White House hasn’t actually said what those transactions may be, and in this story (, the Financial Times argues that “banning WeChat, an app that is central to the lives of a billion Chinese users, would have a heavy impact not just on China’s second most valuable tech company, but also on swathes of US companies.”
It’s a delicate gamble — and it may all be over in a few months if the election in November swings against Trump anyway. But in the meantime, Trumpian Sinophobia may have a bearing on SA’s most valuable company.
Or not — if the market chooses instead to focus on Tencent’s results. Tencent’s latest numbers (for the three months to the end of June), out yesterday were, quite simply, spectacular.
The company — whose tentacles are basically in every facet of Chinese life, from messaging to mobile payments to gaming — beat expectations by clocking up 114.8bn yuan ($16.5bn) in sales, a 29% rise year-on-year. Its profit came to 33.1bn yuan ($4.7bn) — a 37% year-on-year rise.
In fact, Bloomberg argues here ( that Trump’s ban is unlikely to harm Tencent’s business within China, where of course it is most dominant.
Which is good news — even if it’s unclear right now how this will play out, and just how much of a threat Trump’s ban presents to your pension savings.
The trouble ahead for gold
In the meantime, if you’re thinking of other places to put investments, our colleague Joan Muller ...
