Some lawmakers are concerned about the future of a trade preference program for sub-Saharan Africa after a last-ditch effort to extend it using the year-end stopgap spending bill failed last week.
As part of discussions around the must-pass funding legislation, Democrats had been pushing for a short-term extension for the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which grants eligible African countries duty-free access to the U.S. market for certain exports. The language, however, was dropped from the legislation Congress cleared at the end of last week.
“It's very worrisome,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, said of AGOA's omission from the legislation on Wednesday. “We know we need to do this, and the Republicans are blocking it.”
The program, which allows almost $3 billion of agriculture products like tobacco, cocoa and coffee to enter the U.S. duty-free each year, is set to expire in September and enjoys broad bipartisan support in Congress. Earlier in the week, multiple Republican lawmakers told Agri-Pulse they wanted to see the trade preference program included in the must-pass, year-end legislation.
Punchbowl reported on Wednesday that Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had also encouraged negotiations, but the program was then dropped from the final bill draft.
The danger, lawmakers said, is that an incoming Trump administration may take a dimmer view of the trade program, increasing the obstacles to renewal.
During the campaign, the administration has focused on reciprocity in trade relationships – a sentiment that has also come up during meetings between Jamieson Greer, Trump’s pick for U.S. Trade Representative, and senators.
As a nonreciprocal trade program that affords advantages to sub-Saharan African economies without extending equivalent market access to U.S. exports, extending the program could clash with the incoming administration’s trade philosophy.
Ways and Means Committee member Mike Thompson, D-Calif., told Agri-Pulse on Tuesday that these concerns were driving the Democrats’ push to get the program reauthorized in this Congress.
“We couldn't get it done,” said Senate Finance Committee ranking member Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, on Wednesday. “It was not included – that increases the risk” of expiry. Crapo had been pushing his Senate colleagues to pass an early extension ahead of a meeting of African trade ministers this summer.
Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., stressed to Agri-Pulse that Democrats would "keep pushing" for its renewal.
A short-term extension would have given lawmakers additional time to make decisions on how to update the program, which some in the agriculture sector have been pushing for.
The U.S. pork industry, for example, has been pressuring lawmakers to revamp the program and bolster its enforcement mechanisms. Eligible economies have to make progress toward eliminating trade barriers to U.S. trade and investment. The National Pork Producers Council, and some Republican lawmakers, however, argue South Africa is not living up to its barrier-reducing requirements.
“The most important part for us is that they follow international standards and that they follow the international rules if they want to be playing in that sphere, and we're not seeing that out of South Africa,” Maria Zieba, vice president of government affairs at the NPPC, told Agri-Pulse.
Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del., and James Risch, R-Idaho, introduced a bill in April that would renew the program through 2041 and bolster enforcement. The bill also includes a provision that would allow countries to continue receiving benefits once they graduate to high-income status to allow the president time to negotiate a free trade agreement.
More free trade agreements with sub-Saharan African countries, Zieba said, would be the ideal scenario for U.S. pork producers.
Ultimately, though, Zieba said she was concerned that Congress may struggle to renew the agreement before its September expiry. She pointed to the fate of the Generalized System of Preferences, a trade program that enjoys similar bipartisan support in Congress and provided duty-free access to the U.S. market for duty-free countries before it expired at the end of 2020, as portending a difficult path ahead for AGOA.
“That's also very important for industry. We have seen that be a tool and a leverage that we can use to gain market access for our pork producers,” Zieba said. “AGOA should be no different, and we're pushing for both of these to be renewed.”
