Posted April 25, 2014
A small provision in a Coast Guard bill could have a damaging impact on the federal government’s foreign food aid, according to an article by Agri-Pulse available here. The Wall Street Journal also reported on the story here.
The bill calls for adding the phrase “treated as 75 percent” after “Minimum Tonnage” in Section 318 of the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Act of 2014. This wording shifts the percentage of food aid that must be shipped on U.S. -flag vessels from 50 percent to 75 percent. “The shift could prevent life-saving aid from reaching approximately 2 million people and cost $75 million in additional taxpayer dollars,” said Oxfam America, an international development group.
A 2011 Government Accountability Office report agrees, concluding that the legal requirement to ship U.S. commodities sent abroad as food aid on U.S. -flag vessels “increases costs.”
If shipping is more expensive, less money is available to spend on commodities, which could have “real consequences for poor people,” said Gawain Kripke, Oxfam America’s director of policy. “[The changes] literally mean life and death.”
The Obama administration opposes the shift, voicing its concerns in a lettersent to Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). The Department of Homeland Security says the provision would have “grave effects on United States humanitarian assistance programs.”
Some, however, argue that the change could bring more long-term support for foreign food aid programs. Shipping interests and port state lawmakers support the bill, seeing overseas shipping of food aid as a source of income.
For more information on international trade, please visit the National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
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