Pork Industry: Trade Barriers and Other Factors Limit Federal Programs' Potentialto Increase Exports

摘要

According to USDA, current federal export assistance programs are principallydesigned to increase exports over the long term or to respond to humanitarian needs; nonetheless, industry trade officials and others have suggested that these programs might have the potential to increase exports and thus improve producer prices and strengthen the agricultural trade balance. There are four types of federal export programs that could be used to help increase agricultural exports, including pork: (1) export credit guarantee programs, which offer loan guarantees to buyers in certain countries where credit markets are not fully developed; (2) humanitarian food aid programs, which ship U.S. agricultural products to countries where hunger is a major problem; (3) export subsidy programs, which are used to make U.S. agricultural products more competitive in world markets; and (4) export promotion programs, which are intended to develop, maintain, and improve access to foreign markets for U.S. agricultural products through activities such as agricultural trade shows. Concerns have been raised that the U.S. cargo preference laws-which require that 75 percent of humanitarian food aid be shipped under U.S.-flagged carriers-may increase the cost of exporting pork through food aid programs, thereby limiting the volume of pork exports through these programs. In this context, you asked us to review the (1) extent to which other countries' trade practices and the U.S. cargo preference laws are impediments to exporting more pork products; (2) extent to which existing federal programs could be used to increase the export of pork products; and (3) potential for increased pork exports to strengthen the U.S. agricultural trade balance and improve producer prices.