International Trade
Administration of Short Supply in Steel Import Restraint Agreements Gao ID: NSIAD-89-166 June 5, 1989Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Commerce's process for evaluating short-supply requests, through which steel consumers petition Commerce to allow additional steel imports from countries which have voluntary restraint agreements (VRA) limiting steel imports to the United States.
GAO found that: (1) as of the end of 1988, Commerce had approved 94 and denied 36 of the 161 short-supply petitions it received, with 27 petitions withdrawn and 4 pending; (2) the approved petitions resulted in an additional 1.4 million tons in steel imports; (3) Commerce used an informal administrative process and based short-supply decisions on the availability of domestic steel, without considering domestic prices; (4) steel consumers and producers believed that the program lacked clarity and openness, since Commerce lacked regulations and comprehensive program guidance and did not publicize the rationale for its decisions or the results of its reviews; (5) Commerce reduced its average processing time from 236 days to 81 days, which could still adversely affect some steel purchasers; (6) Commerce lacked a standard, publicly known deadline for completing reviews; (7) although Commerce had a tracking system to measure the timeliness of its decisions, it did not consistently track the full process from petition receipt to petitioner notification; and (8) almost half of 143 petition files examined contained such serious documentation deficiencies as missing information.
RecommendationsOur recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.
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