Fundamentals of U.s. Foreign Trade Policy: Economics, Politics, Laws, and Issues by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Globalization, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780813317465
Google: LqC2AAAAIAAJ
Goodreads: 3179075
Publisher: Westview Press
Published: 1995-02-08T00:00:00+00:00

Export Promotion Laws

The impact of export policy is no less important than the impact of import policy on domestic employment. Yet laws governing exports are sometimes overlooked in discussions of trade policy. Perhaps one explanation is that unlike import policy, export policy tends to be formulated on a case-by-case basis depending on political relations and national security considerations as well as economic interests. Whereas the antidumping and countervailing duty provisions, for example, are fairly technical and provide relatively objective criteria for determining when to impose tariffs, the statutes governing exports afford the executive branch broad discretion to decide how to regulate exports in a given situation. There are three broad categories of government programs to examine: export promotion laws, market-opening laws, and export restrictions.

The U.S. government has a variety of programs for promoting U.S. exports. The most important of these is the Export-Import Bank, which provides financing to foreign purchasers of U.S. exports. The Export-Import Bank was originally created by executive order in 1934 but was later chartered by Congress as a U.S. government corporation under the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945.27 The Treasury Department financed the bank with lending in excess of $1 billion on which the bank pays interest. The Export-Import Bank lends to foreign purchasers on easier terms than might be available from a commercial bank. Export credits are a form of export subsidy, but all major industrial countries maintain export credit programs. From its creation through the early 1990s, the Export-Import Bank has provided about $200 billion in financing for U.S. exports.

There are a variety of other programs operated by the government to assist small- and medium-sized businesses that seek to enter foreign markets. Among these programs are the Department of Commerce's programs for providing information and counseling to exporters. Programs administered by the Department of Agriculture to promote the export of U.S. farm products include Public Law 480,28 which provides food assistance to poor countries on concessional terms; the Food Security Act of 1985, which promotes agricultural exports generally; and the Commodity Credit Corporation, which provides guarantees to U.S. banks against defaults on loans for agricultural exports. The Internal Revenue Code also encourages exports through special provisions affording favorable tax treatment for export sales by U.S.-controlled companies deemed to be either foreign sales corporations or domestic international sales corporations.29

The Export Trading Company Act of 198230 authorizes the formation of export trading companies between banks and commercial companies to provide export services to U.S. producers. The act lifts certain restrictions that would otherwise prevent banks from participating in a commercial business and possible antitrust restrictions on companies that provide export services. The purpose is to make export services more widely available to small- and medium-sized companies. The actual number and significance of export trading companies that have been formed as a result of the act have been modest.

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