Summary#
This bill amends the Agricultural Trade Act to require an annual report on the competitiveness of United States exports of specialty crops. The Secretary of Agriculture, working with the United States Trade Representative, must send the report to the appropriate congressional committees each year.
The report must:
- identify and analyze foreign acts, policies, or practices that are significant barriers to or distortions of specialty crop exports, including tariffs (including retaliatory tariffs), quotas (including tariff-rate quotas), and nontariff barriers such as technical barriers to trade, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, import licensing procedures, and subsidies;
- estimate the impacts of those acts, policies, or practices on U.S. export competitiveness and, if feasible, estimate the value of additional specialty crops that would have been exported in the prior year if those measures did not exist;
- assess whether each identified act, policy, or practice is subject to international agreements to which the United States is a party;
- include information about actions taken by the executive branch during the prior year or expected after the report to remove identified barriers, including actions under section 301, negotiations or consultations (including through SPS committees in free trade agreements), and actions at the World Trade Organization;
- describe any funds under subsection (f)(3)(A)(iv) that were not obligated in the prior fiscal year and explain why they were not obligated.
Before preparing the report, the Secretary and the USTR must seek public comment and comments from the Agricultural Technical Advisory Committee for Trade in Fruits and Vegetables and consider those comments. The unclassified portion of the report must be made publicly available in a machine-readable format; a classified annex is allowed.
What it means for you#
- Congress will receive an annual, public report about foreign barriers and how the executive branch addressed them for specialty crop exports.
- Growers, exporters, and the public can see identified trade barriers and government actions in a machine-readable report.
- The Agriculture Department and USTR must coordinate on the report and seek public and advisory committee input before publication.
Expenses#
No publicly available information on the cost of preparing the report or any new appropriations. The bill text does not specify new funding levels. The report must describe any funds under subsection (f)(3)(A)(iv) that were not obligated and explain why.
Proponents' View#
The bill requires a regular, detailed report to identify foreign trade barriers to specialty crops and to document actions taken or planned to address those barriers. Sponsors introduced the bill to create that annual record and to make the unclassified findings publicly available in machine-readable form.
Opponents' View#
No publicly available information on objections or opposition to this bill in the provided material.