Summary

Subsidized agricultural export competition has intensified, and agricultural trade has become a point of friction between the United States and its major trade partners. At the same time, the number and the costs of U.S. agricultural export programs have risen. Budgetary constraints and the substantial money spent on agriculture export programs make good program management critical. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) manages about $10 billion a year in agricultural export assistance programs intended to boost U.S. agricultural exports and to develop and maintain foreign agricultural markets for U.S. products. This testimony outlines a number of crosscutting program and management weaknesses that diminish the efficiency and the effectiveness of FAS' export operations.