State Trading in the Twenty-First Century by Cottier Thomas;Mavroidis Petros Constantinos;Schefer Krista;

Author:Cottier, Thomas;Mavroidis, Petros Constantinos;Schefer, Krista;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Press

U.S. Government-Owned Corporations

Another way of looking at public sector corporations in the United States — many of which, once again, do not appear to fall within the definition used for Article XVII — is to consult the Government Corporation Control Act.24 That statute defines a “government corporation” as a “mixed-ownership Government corporation and a wholly owned Government corporation”, and it provides a list of the particular entities that qualify as each.25 At present, the mixed-ownership Government corporations include:

(A) Amtrak;

(B) the Central Bank for Cooperatives;

(C) the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation;

(D) the Federal Home Loan Banks;

(E) the Federal Intermediate Credit Banks;

(F) the Federal Land Banks;

(G) the National Credit Union Administration Central Liquidation Facility;

(H) the Regional Banks for Cooperatives;

(I) the Rural Telephone Bank when the ownership, control, and operation of the Bank are converted under section 410(a) of the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 (7 U.S.C. 950(a));

(J) the Financing Corporation;

(K) the Resolution Trust Corporation26; and

(L) the Resolution Funding Corporation.

31 U.S.C. § 9101(2). The list of wholly-owned government corporations is as follows:

(A) the Commodity Credit Corporation;

(B) the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund;

(C) the Export-Import Bank of the United States;

(D) the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation;

(E) Federal Prison Industries, Incorporated;

(F) the Corporation for National and Community Service;

(G) the Government National Mortgage Association;

(H) the Overseas Private Investment Corporation;

(I) the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation;

(J) the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation;

(K) the Rural Telephone Bank until the ownership, control, and operation of the Bank are converted under section 410(a) of the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 (7 U.S.C. 950(a));

(L) the Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation;

(M) the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development when carrying out duties and powers related to the Federal Housing Administration Fund;

(N) the Tennessee Valley Authority;

(O) the Uranium Enrichment Corporation;

(P) the Panama Canal Commission; and

(Q) the Alternative Agricultural Research and Commercialization Corporation.27

The United States Postal Service has its own title of the U.S. Code, Title 39, which spells out its structure and responsibilities. In 1970, through the Postal Reorganization Act28, the Post Office Department was abolished as a Cabinet-level Department, and in its place Congress created an independent establishment within the Executive Branch of government to own and operate the postal system.29

Almost all of the entities on the “mixed-ownership” list operate in the banking and insurance industries, where they provide financial support or insurance of last resort to borrowers in various sectors of the economy (private homeowners, farmers, credit unions, etc.). Federal Deposit Insurance protects small savings accounts (up to $100,000) in all federal- and State-chartered banks. When the savings and loan crisis hit the United States in the late 1980s, the Resolution Trust Corporation was created in order to facilitate the transfer of assets from failing banks to healthy institutions. None of these functions, however, is reserved exclusively to the government in the sense of either Article XVII or even Treaty of Rome Article 37 or 90. Indeed, the government would have been happy if private insurers had stepped forward to protect depositors or to save the savings and loan associations. The effect of the government’s

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