U.S. Reps. Adrian Smith (R-NE) and Vern Buchanan (R-FL), members of the U.S. House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee, recently joined their subcommittee colleagues in considering the nation’s future trade efforts in Africa and Haiti.
Specifically, they discussed potential reforms to the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) that would expand fair market access for U.S. farmers and combat aggression from China and Russia in Africa.
With the trade preference program set to expire next year, witnesses at the June 12 subcommittee hearing urged lawmakers to consider reforms that would meet key goals, such as resuming the Trump administration’s free trade agreement negotiations with Kenya, addressing rules governing when countries become ineligible for AGOA based on per-capita income, and securing U.S. supply chains, according to the members’ staffs.
During the hearing, House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Smith highlighted the strong bipartisan support that multiple members of the Ways and Means Committee have expressed for a trade agreement with Kenya.
But the congressman noted that the Biden administration does not appear to agree since it ended negotiations started by the Trump administration in 2020, according to a hearing summary provided by his office.
“I hear the comments here and an appetite for a trade agreement with Kenya,” Rep. Smith said. “I’m beginning to wonder that the only people opposed to a trade agreement with Kenya happen to be at the White House. How unfortunate. Because as I engage with colleagues here in the legislative branch, there is this appetite and enthusiasm to get going here.
“Let’s not have our trading partners who are doing the right thing all along the way and utilizing AGOA, and then [be left with] nowhere else to go,” he added. “It’s hard to even call it graduation when it’s a dead end. We owe, ultimately, the American people, better policy through this effort. I would hope that we could dig and dig deeper.”
At the same time, Rep. Buchanan said that a failure to reauthorize AGOA would diminish America’s ability to counter Russia and China in Africa, which is one of the world’s most strategically important regions and where the U.S. does one-fifth in terms of trade with Africa compared with the Chinese.
“$282 billion [is what] the Chinese do. My numbers [are] $84 billion that we do. How do we close the gap?” Rep. Buchanan asked witnesses. “We say we need a new agreement. We need a new and improved agreement that helps these folks…. We really need to up our game. We talk a good game, but we don’t deliver.”
Trade preference programs for Haiti are also set to expire in 2025 and witnesses noted that the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement (HOPE) Act and the Haiti Economic Lift Program (HELP) Act could help stabilize and provide economic opportunity in Haiti, according to the summary.
The subcommittee hearing is the latest activity in the Ways and Means Committee to prepare for the 2025 expirations. Thus far, the full committee has held multiple roundtables with African ambassadors and stakeholders, while committee members have visited AGOA nations to learn about the program’s impact firsthand, staff said.