There seems to have been a dramatic sidestepping of the detail on a lot of issues recently. Detail is boring, often buried in large reports or complex, boring laws dictating process, buried even in history.

On US-SA relations, and particularly after the reciprocal tariff shock, last Friday’s press conference with the trade, industry & competition and international relations & co-operation ministers seemed to miss the crucial how concerning trade deal talks with the US they apparently want to have.

The US has had a long and detailed set of complaints about trade issues with SA, especially concerning agriculture but also related to trade in services (including security companies and copyright laws) together with the impact of various policies.

It is not clear at all that any work has been done to fundamentally address this in recent years, let alone recent months. The US Trade report makes clear the hurdles per country, and countries such as Japan have been able to make progress in getting talks by putting the US’s issues on the table to discuss. There was no indication whatsoever last week that this is what the SA government intends to do.

There seems to be a naïve Art of the Deal potted sound bite-style take here from the government — seen also in The New York Times article a month ago and its reference to offering up SA gas exploration to the US. That glossed over the how in terms of the huge change in the doing-business environment around gas exploration that US companies (and others) had previously tried and failed to navigate, and ignored all the other issues.

This all presupposes that the US is open to talking to SA, when the tariff policy is about a far larger global realignment of trade barriers and balances that the US is particularly forcing against large trade counterparties such as China and the EU. SA is not a priority here, especially in light of the issues the US has with SA foreign policy, empowerment and second-order issues such as Afrikaner rights.

In all the kumbaya from government on the bilateral relationship this how is sorely missing — remaining mindful of the fact that it needs to actually understand and accept what the other side’s posture is.

The other how problem is the budget. It seems this question was not asked sufficiently by many parties before last week. A detailed look at the Money Bills Amendment Procedure & Related Matters Amendment Act of 2018 makes clear the tight set of requirements for amendments to revenue and expenditure after the framework is passed, and how consistency is required — crucially separately — on the revenue side and the expenditure side.

As the EFF and DA have said, the time for fiscally neutral cuts to both revenue (taking out VAT) and expenditure (cutting around the place) is only before the report is adopted through amendments, not after. Some parties in the government of national unity (GNU), as well as ActionSA, Build One SA and others, seem to talk as if this is not the case, while the president was speaking in circles on the issue this past weekend but seemed to imply that the National Treasury’s position is that the time is over for such fiscally neutral cuts.

The politics is quite easy here — there is a political agreement around (or political “amendment” to) the fiscal framework, but the how gets in the way of executing this legally and in reality. Parliament could ignore this and proceed — we saw severe fudginess in process last week, for sure. Who would challenge a fudge? Would the Treasury really take parliament to court?

But the how intervenes again — the expenditure side is dealt with in two bills, first in parliament in May then the rates bill (the revenue bill with VAT in it) later — after VAT increase implementation day on May 1. People also seem to have forgotten that parliament is in recess until the end of the month.

The Treasury has been abundantly clear in public that it will unilaterally hike VAT if there is no change to the rates bill, which is procedurally impossible anyway. There could be political intervention, with the president instructing the finance minister not to implement the VAT hike, but then what? We would have market panic because there would be no clarity on how the fiscal framework balances. (And as a sidebar, we are looking at a larger revenue hole this fiscal year even with more VAT, given Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs).

As I said a few weeks ago, it would have been far easier for VAT to have been removed upfront either in the second version of the budget or in amendments to the framework. I strongly disagree with the line that there would have been market panic if there were amendments to the framework at the committee stage.

As we move forward on both the US issue and the fiscal issue the how remains crucial, and is the only bedrock here. This is equally true for the GNU stability issue, where there is too much wishful thinking and kumbaya. The how on GNU 1.0 remaining together is the most knotty when we consider politicians not wanting to step back and compromise, the ANC wanting to govern on its terms and the hard lines (rightly or wrongly) the DA has taken, for instance, on the court case.

In the long term coalitions aren’t going anywhere, and everyone will eventually have to accept that the new rules of the game are crucial to stability. As is the how of the budget process going forward.

• Peter Attard Montalto leads on political economy, markets and the just energy transition at Krutham, a SA research-led consulting company.

This article first appeared in Business Day.