South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa will hold crucial talks at the White House with US President Donald Trump on Wednesday in a high-stakes meeting that could improve or deteriorate already frosty relations between the nations.

Ramaphosa is hopeful his visit could end a diplomatic feud that sparked aid cancellations by Trump and fueled the expulsion of his nation’s ambassador to the US.

There are also fears that the African nation could now potentially lose some of its US trade privileges as relations between the two countries sour.

Ramaphosa’s trip comes just over a week after a group of 59 White South Africans arrived in the US after being granted refugee status.

Trump and his ally Elon Musk, who was born and raised in the country, claimed the South Africans were being persecuted back home. On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it was in the US national interest to prioritize White South Africans for refugee resettlement, telling a hearing that they’re “a small subset” who “are easier to vet.”

The Trump administration has sharply criticized an expropriation law, which was enacted in South Africa earlier this year. The law empowers South Africa’s government to take land and redistribute it with no obligation to pay compensation in some instances.

Trump claimed that lands belonging to South Africa’s minority Whites, who own 72% of the nation’s agricultural land, were being targeted for confiscation, and cited unverified claims that “a genocide is taking place” in South Africa. He added that “White farmers are being brutally killed” amid reports of farm attacks.

Trump also disapproves of South Africa’s genocide case before the International Court of Justice against the US ally Israel.

Ramaphosa’s office said he would “discuss bilateral, regional and global issues of interest” with the US president at the White House. Analysts say the meeting could pose a tipping point for their fraught ties.

The US is South Africa’s second-largest trading partner, and the African nation benefits the most from a US trade agreement that provides preferential duty-free access to US markets for eligible sub-Saharan African nations.

Under that agreement, South Africa is the main agricultural exporter and exports two-thirds of its agricultural goods to the US, tariff-free. But some US lawmakers want those benefits withdrawn when the trade agreement is reviewed this year.

‘A tricky place to be’

South African researcher Neo Letswalo describes the anticipated meeting as “make-or-break” and one that requires “supreme negotiation tactics” by Ramaphosa.

The South African leader is set for a tight rope walk at the White House, he added, reminiscing about a shouting match that broke out in the Oval Office between Trump, his Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in late February.

He believes that “Ramaphosa would maintain his composure to iron out some of the misunderstandings that Trump’s administration officials have about South Africa.”

Other analysts, such as Christopher Afoke Isike, who is a professor of African politics and international relations at the University of Pretoria, believe that Ramaphosa can pull through, “considering the fact that he’s a businessman president like President Trump.”

Ramaphosa plans to soften the ground with a potential licensing deal for Starlink, a satellite internet service owned by Musk, Ramaphosa’s spokesman Vincent Magwenya told Reuters Monday.

What could go wrong?

For Letswalo, the crucial talks between Trump and Ramaphosa could hit a brick wall if the White House makes costly demands.

“A dealbreaker would be a request by Washington for Pretoria to retrieve the Land Expropriation Act or Gaza Case in order to continue the US-SA relationship,” he said, adding, “it would be interesting to see how President Ramaphosa maintains the sovereignty and his statement of ‘not going to be bullied by America’, without compromising the pre-existing relationship with the US.”

That task could be one of Ramaphosa’s most challenging, according to André Duvenhage, a politics professor at South Africa’s Northwest University.

“This may be his single biggest challenge in terms of anything he had to deal with in his term as president of the Republic of South Africa.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Kursk for the first time since Moscow claimed to have completely recaptured the region following a surprise incursion by Ukrainian forces last year, Russian state news agency TASS reported on Wednesday.

Putin met with municipal leaders in the city of Kurchatov and visited the Kursk nuclear power plant, which is currently under construction, the Kremlin said, according to TASS.

Video footage posted by Russian state media showed Putin dressed in a suit speaking with what appeared to be local volunteers.

The news agency did not report when the visit took place.

Last August Ukraine launched a shock incursion into Kursk, swiftly capturing territory in what was the first ground invasion of Russia by a foreign power since World War II.

Since then, Russia, with support from North Korean soldiers, has been fighting to oust Ukraine’s forces from its borders, while Kyiv poured precious resources into holding onto its territory there, with the view of using it as a key bargaining chip in any peace talks.

Putin claimed last month that Russian forces had recaptured Kursk and said North Korean soldiers took part in the fighting to recover territory in the region.

Kyiv has insisted its troops are fiercely battling to preserve their foothold in the territory.

Last week Ukraine said it is still pursuing the ground war inside Russia.

“We are continuing our active operations in the Kursk and Belgorod regions – we are proactively defending Ukraine’s border areas,” President Zelensky said in his nightly address last Wednesday.

An off-the-cuff remark about never paying for rice has cost Japan’s agriculture minister his job, as pressure mounts on the government to solve the nation’s rice crisis.

Taku Eto resigned on Wednesday, telling reporters that he had concluded he was “not the right person for this role” after sparking a public backlash by saying that he had “so much rice at home that (he) could sell it.”

The cost of rice – Japan’s prime staple food – has become a major political issue, with prices surging to record highs this year and the government taking the rare steps of releasing emergency reserves and importing foreign rice.

Eto’s gaffe could not have come at a worse time for Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s government, which was already suffering from low approval ratings due to spiraling cost of living, weeks ahead of an election.

“I have never bought rice myself. Frankly, my supporters give me quite a lot of rice. I have so much rice at home that I could sell it,” Eto said in a speech over the weekend, drawing the ire of the public.

He later clarified he did buy his own rice and said he “deeply regretted” his comments.

“I made an extremely inappropriate remark as the minister responsible. For that, I apologize once again to the people of Japan,” Eto said Wednesday after tendering his resignation.

He added that he “fully recognized” the hardship people are facing due to soaring rice prices.

A major threat

Frustrations over the rising cost of living in Japan is shaping up to be a major threat for Prime Minister Ishiba and his Liberal Democratic Party as the country heads to the polls for upper house elections in July.

The latest approval ratings for Ishiba’s cabinet slipped to 27.4%, a record low, according to a poll by Japanese news agency Kyodo released on Sunday. Almost one in nine of the households surveyed said the government’s efforts to rein in rice prices had been insufficient.

Ishiba’s party, which has ruled Japan for almost all of its post-war history, suffered a crushing defeat in last year’s lower house election, but he held on to power by seeking support from minor parties.

Further defeat in the coming elections could threaten his coalition’s rule and spark calls for a new leader.

Rice price stubbornly high

Despite the government’s attempts to bring them down, rice prices in Japan have remained stubbornly high – almost twice what they were a year ago.

The average retail price of rice rose to 4,268 yen ($29.4 US) per five kilograms in the second week of May, reversing a brief decline in 18 weeks recorded in the previous month, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

Earlier this year, it took the rare step of putting hundreds of thousands of tons of rice from its emergency reserves up for auction, in a bid to drive down prices. Multiple auctions have since been scheduled until July, with hundreds of thousands of tons of rice being released.

Japan, which takes deep pride in its homegrown rice, has also scaled up imports of rice from overseas, mainly from the US. In April, it also imported South Korean rice for the first time since 1999.

Dealing with the rice crisis is now the job of Shinjiro Koizumi, a former environment minister and son of a former Japanese Prime Minister, who Ishiba has appointed to head the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

“I have instructed Mr. Koizumi to make strong efforts to supply rice to consumers at a stable price, especially in light of the current high rice prices,” Ishiba said.