The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) will terminate as scheduled on Tuesday amid uncertainty over renegotiations and the looming impact of new tariffs announced by the White House in April, putting thousands of jobs on the line.

AGOA is a multilateral trade agreement that has given thousands of products from qualifying African nations duty-free access to U.S. markets since 2000.

A key example of the deal's impact can be found in Kenya, where it has allowed the country’s textile and apparel sector — makers of jeans, for instance — to effectively compete with Asian exporters such as in Bangladesh and Vietnam.

Mother of three, Julia Shigadi, has worked as a machinist at the apparel manufacturing facility United Aryan for 22 years. Every morning, she goes to work some 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from her house. She earns Ksh 20,000 (USD 155).

"For all those years this has been my bread and butter," said Shigadi. "I only depend on this job. So if it is gone, it means my life is gone too."

In Kenya, more than 66,000 people, many of them women, were employed through now-vulnerable textile and apparel exporters to the U.S. in the garment districts of Kenya’s bustling capital.

The end of a trade deal with the United States could spell the end of her employment and hundreds of thousands like her across Africa.

Textile and apparel exports from Kenya to the U.S. have increased from around $50 million when AGOA was first introduced to around $500 million today.

AGOA had also given African countries hope that major elements of their export economies would be exempt from blanket tariffs of 10% — and in some cases much higher — announced by the U.S. earlier this year.

Ruto and other African leaders are pushing for a last-minute renegotiation of AGOA while also scrambling to sign new bilateral agreements with the U.S. They are doing so amid a period of seismic change in global trade dynamics and with a White House that shows a mixed commitment to Africa.

“African countries including Kenya must be alive to the possibility that AGOA won’t be extended, AGOA won’t be remodified, and … America won’t be interested in having a trade pact,” said Raphael Obonyo, a public policy expert at UN-Habitat.

Some African economies, like Nigeria and Lesotho, are likely to face “notable adverse effects” from the end of AGOA and new U.S. tariffs, researchers at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability wrote in a brief.

AGOA-dependent industries likely employ some 1.3 million people whose jobs are now at risk — in countries where many people have few if any wealth buffers in the case of sudden unemployment.

“If AGOA goes away we have zero chance to compete with the Asian countries,” said Pankaj Bedi, owner of United Aryan.

United Aryan said this week that it will shed some 1,000 jobs or 10% of its workforce amid trade uncertainty.

"There is no way we can survive,” added Bedi, who is also the apparel export sub-chair at the Kenya Association of Manufacturers.

AP Video by Desomond Tiro