Defense Production Act

Offsets in Military Exports and Proposed Amendments to the Act Gao ID: NSIAD-90-164 April 19, 1990

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed: (1) the interagency process used to prepare the 1988 report on offsets in military exports; (2) the use of economic models to measure the impact of offsets; and (3) information on proposed amendments to the Defense Production Act.

GAO found that: (1) agencies used an informal process to prepare the 1988 offsets report because they had no guidelines or written procedures; (2) the report summarized new data on prime contractors, but did not include any analysis of that data; (3) the report basically restated the findings of three prior reports to Congress and reproduced previous analyses based on case studies related to industrial competitiveness, employment, and international trade; (4) the methodology used to prepare the report did not identify the effect of offsets on specific critical industries; (5) differing agency views may have significantly affected the 1988 and previous reports' conclusions; and (6) proposed legislative amendments would better provide for the inclusion of differing views in the annual offsets report.

Recommendations

Our 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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