Trade agreements: once you negotiate one, you've got to monitor and enforce it.
The General Accountability Office (GAO) reviewed U.S. monitoring and enforcement last June: Further Improvements Needed to Handle Growing Workload for Monitoring and Enforcing Trade Agreements.
U.S. monitoring and enforcement responsibilities are divided among the Office of U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), the Department of Commerce, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of State. Activities by these, and 13 other agencies are coordinated by subcommittees of the the USTR led Trade Policy Review Group.
The workload is getting heavier. Increasing membership in the WTO means more countries to watch. As do increasing numbers of free trade agreements (FTAs). The agreements are getting more complex; its not just tariffs anymore "Agency officials noted that they spend a significant amount of time attempting to resolve complex intellectual property rights issues. Foreign governments are increasingly using technical standards as trade barriers..."
But available resources are not getting larger. There's been little change since 2002. Click on the figure for clearer, version:
Agencies don't expect funding increases anytime soon.
Increasing responsibilities, static resource levels, something's got to give:
Trade agencies face growing demands on their resources for handling their monitoring and enforcement workloads. Since monitoring and enforcing trade agreements is only one activity undertaken by trade agencies, resources for monitoring and enforcement face competition from other trade activities, such as negotiating new agreements. Further, tight budgets and growing costs in recent years constrained staffing levels....
One area with which monitoring and enforcement activities must compete for resources is the negotiation of new trade agreements. Since the passage of Trade Promotion Authority in 2002, trade agencies have been heavily involved in supporting numerous negotiations. These have included the WTO’s Doha Development Agenda, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and other FTAs. Since 2000 alone, the United States has completed negotiations on free trade agreements with 12 countries, and negotiations are under way or about to begin with 12 more countries. These negotiations require significant amounts of staff time and resources. This can have an effect on monitoring and enforcement activities because oftentimes the same units contributing to negotiating new agreements also monitor existing agreements. In addition, once FTAs are completed, trade agencies then must devote significant resources to monitoring countries’ compliance with these new agreements, thus adding further to the workload.
GAO finds improvements in agency coordination and communication since the last time they looked, but also finds that efforts still fall short. Agencies coordinate strategy, but they don't coordinate "resource planning efforts." "Each agency independently assesses its resource needs for fufilling its mission."
As a sidebar, sometimes firms don't turn to the U.S. government for trade assistance - in France, for example:
...At times, however, companies turn to the U.S. government only as a last resort or ask the U.S. government not to get involved in certain issues. Companies told us this was particularly the case in those countries where association with the U.S. government might be seen as more of a detriment than an aid. For example, several private sector representatives from large U.S. companies operating in Europe told us that they typically attempt to resolve compliance issues with European governments without help from the U.S. government. In France, for example, a private sector representative told us that negative public sentiment toward the U.S. government makes some U.S. companies shy away from U.S. government assistance on trade issues.
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