GAO

United States General Accounting Office

Report to the Chairman, Committee on 

Ways and Means, House of 

Representatives

December 1999 INTERNATIONAL 

TRADE

Improvements Needed 

to Track and Archive 

Trade Agreements

GAO/NSIAD-00-24

Page 1 GAO/NSIAD-00-24 International Trade

Contents

Letter 3

Appendixes Appendix I: U.S. Trade Representative, State, and Commerce 

Central Archives of Trade Agreements 26

Appendix II: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology 32

Appendix III: Comments From the Department of State 34

Appendix IV: Comments From the Department of Commerce 35

Appendix V: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments 38

Tables Table 1: Trade Agreements That Entered Into Force During 

1984-98, Based on USTR, Commerce, and State Archives 10

Figures Figure 1: U.S. Export Growth as Compared to Gross Domestic 

Product Growth, 1970-97 7

Figure 2: The Commerce, USTR, and State Department Archives 

Do Not Contain All Trade Agreements 11

Figure 3: Department of Commerce's Internet Site Page for 

Accessing Trade Agreements and Related Information 18

Abbreviations

GDP gross domestic product

TCC Trade Compliance Center

USTR U.S. Trade Representative
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United States General Accounting Office

Washington, D.C. 20548

National Security and

International Affairs Division

B-284062 Letr

December 14, 1999

The Honorable Bill Archer

Chairman, Committee on Ways and Means

House of Representatives

Dear Mr. Chairman:

International trade has become increasingly important to the U.S. economy. 

Since 1990, U.S. exports have increased about 70 percent, to almost 

$700 billion a year. In recent decades, the United States has led the world in 

the effort to create a system of open trade under accepted rules, in which 

reduction of trade barriers such as tariffs and import quotas would help 

provide greater market access for U.S. goods and services. The current 

administration has sought to build on previous efforts by negotiating 

several hundred separate trade agreements since 1992 aimed at opening 

markets and creating wider economic opportunities for Americans. Most of 

these agreements were negotiated by the Office of the U.S. Trade 

Representative, which is part of the Office of the President and is 

statutorily responsible for developing and coordinating U.S. international 

trade policy. The rest were negotiated by the Departments of State, 

Commerce, and other federal agencies. Congress has expressed interest in 

how the executive branch monitors and enforces these agreements. One 

key component of this process is the method the executive branch uses to 

track its agreements. Another is the means by which the executive branch 

fosters increased public awareness of the agreements and the 

opportunities that they provide.

As you requested, we examined (1) the number of trade agreements the 

United States is party to, (2) the way in which the executive branch notifies 

Congress when trade agreements are entered into, and (3) the extent to 

which the public has ready access to information from government sources 

about trade agreements. 

Trade agreements are negotiated understandings between two or more 

countries that generally address the terms of trade. There is no universal 

definition of a trade agreement, because agreements can take many forms 

and serve different purposes. 
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Appendix II describes our specific scope and methodology.

Results in Brief The number of trade agreements to which the United States is currently a 

party is uncertain. Officials at key agencies were unable to provide a 

definitive count of all U.S. trade agreements that are currently in force, 

despite the fact that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, State, and 

Commerce have created separate archives containing many agreements. 

We identified 441 different trade agreements that entered into force from 

1984 through 1998 among the three archives, but were not able to 

determine the total number of U.S. trade agreements currently in force. 

This is because (1) agency archives serve different purposes, (2) a 

governmentwide definition of what constitutes a “trade agreement” does 

not exist, and (3) there are record-keeping weaknesses and inconsistencies 

in the archives. The most comprehensive of these archives, which belongs 

to Commerce, was intended to include all agreements but contains only 

about two-thirds of the total number of agreements that we identified by 

examining all three sources. Commerce’s archive is incomplete because 

federal agencies have not worked together to establish criteria for 

identifying agreements to be included, and no interagency procedure has 

been instituted for forwarding such trade agreements to Commerce.

Congress is notified when trade agreements are entered into through two 

formal mechanisms. First, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s 

annual report, distributed to each Member of Congress, includes a list (but 

not the text) of substantive trade agreements that it has negotiated since 

1984 and that afford increased foreign market access to the United States.1

Other agreements negotiated by the Office of the U.S. Trade 

Representative, such as those that only regulate imports into the United 

States, are not included. Second, as required by law,2

 State sends Congress3

a copy of any agreement that State determines is an “international 

agreement” based on criteria that State defines and applies. For example, 

State requires an international agreement to contain commitments that are 

judged significant and legally binding, among other criteria. Many trade 

1

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative prepares its annual report to meet a statutory 

requirement. The list of trade agreements, however, is not required by law.

2

1 U.S.C. 112b, commonly known as the “Case-Zablocki Act,” and the accompanying 

regulations, 22 C.F.R. 181.1-181.8. 

3

State officially notifies the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House.
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agreements do not qualify as international agreements under State’s 

criteria. Other federal agencies are required to forward to State those 

agreements they negotiate, including trade agreements, that might fall 

within the criteria that State has established. However, Congress may not 

have received the texts of some trade agreements negotiated by the Office 

of the U.S. Trade Representative that do meet the criteria because the 

agency has not transmitted copies of all of its negotiated agreements to 

State. Neither agency has records documenting whether the Office of the 

U.S. Trade Representative transmitted and State reviewed all trade 

agreements negotiated by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative that 

might fall within State’s criteria. Recently, the Office of the U.S. Trade 

Representative established new procedures to improve its transmittal of 

new agreements to State for review. 

Although federal agencies have provided the public with greater access to 

information about trade agreements in recent years, government sources 

available to the public are not always complete and accurate. Commerce’s 

trade agreements archive, publicly available on the internet since early 

1998, is the government’s principal vehicle for providing access to trade 

agreements. However, Commerce cannot guarantee the texts’ accuracy or 

completeness, and the archive does not include all trade agreements. State 

makes copies of its agreements available in two principal ways: through the 

Government Printing Office and through Freedom of Information Act 

requests. However, due to State funding limitations, the Government 

Printing Office is only now printing texts of agreements signed in 1994, and 

commercial publishers that obtain the agreements from State require the 

public to pay for copies of the agreements. The Office of the U.S. Trade 

Representative does not routinely make copies of its agreements directly 

available to the public. Although the Office of the U.S. Trade 

Representative has provided the text of many agreements to Commerce for 

inclusion in Commerce’s archive, our analysis indicates that nearly 

30 percent of the agreements are not in Commerce’s data base. Commerce 

officials explained that many of these agreements are not in their archive 

because they had either expired or were superseded by other agreements.

In this report, we are making recommendations to the Secretary of 

Commerce and the U.S. Trade Representative to improve the accuracy and 

completeness of trade agreement data bases. In addition, we are making 

recommendations to the U.S. Trade Representative and the Secretary of 

State to comply with the requirement for notifying Congress about 

international agreements that meet the provisions of the Case-Zablocki Act. 
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Background The Constitution grants Congress the authority to regulate commerce with 

foreign nations. In practice, Congress has long delegated authority for 

proclaiming reciprocal tariff reductions with U.S. trading partners to the 

President and has encouraged the President to enter into certain trade 

agreements that meet congressionally mandated objectives. The Office of 

the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) leads or directs negotiations with 

other countries on many trade matters. Other federal agencies also 

negotiate certain kinds of trade agreements. For example, the Department 

of Commerce negotiates textile import agreements with other countries, 

and the Department of Agriculture negotiates various trade-related 

agriculture provisions. Trade policy is managed at the working level by the 

Trade Policy Staff Committee, an interagency group with representation at 

the senior civil servant level, administered and chaired by USTR. Policy 

decisions are generally developed via interagency consensus; interagency 

conflicts are resolved at progressively higher levels within the executive 

branch. The committee also monitors the trade agreements program. 

Trade has become more important to the U.S. economy; since the late 

1980s, the rate of growth for U.S. exports has increasingly exceeded the 

overall U.S. economic growth rate (see fig. 1). Almost all U.S. trade is 

governed by trade agreements that employ specific language, terms, and 

objectives to promote U.S. trade and to reduce barriers to the export of 

U.S. products. For example, key trade agreements aim to improve U.S. 

market access abroad by setting ground rules for the treatment of U.S. 

exports and investments in foreign markets, establishing the maximum 

tariff that will apply to U.S. exports, and providing for the gradual lowering 

or elimination of such tariffs and other barriers over time. 
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Figure 1: U.S. Export Growth as Compared to Gross Domestic Product Growth, 1970-97

Note: Exports and the gross domestic product (GDP) are presented as index numbers where their 

value in 1970 equals 100.

Source: GAO calculations based on International Financial Statistics. (Washington, D.C.: International 

Monetary Fund, Jan. 1999).

Trade agreements vary considerably both in content and in form, 

depending on their purpose. They may be generally categorized in a 

number of ways. For example, agreements can be categorized by the 

number of signatories. Most trade agreements that the United States is 

party to are bilateral. However, regional agreements such as the North
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American Free Trade Agreement4 and multilateral agreements such as 

those under the World Trade Organization5

 govern a greater percentage of 

U.S. trade than the generally narrower bilateral agreements. In addition, 

trade agreements can be categorized by the content of their provisions. 

For example, some agreements cover specific industries or sectors such as 

agriculture, automobiles, and telecommunications. Other agreements focus 

more on technical or scientific issues affecting trade, such as establishing 

standards to control the health and safety of agricultural products. Also, 

some agreements focus primarily on opening foreign markets to the United 

States, while others deal largely with regulating the importation of various 

products into the United States. Finally, agreements can also be 

categorized by whether or not they are binding. Some binding 

agreements, such as the World Trade Organization agreements and the 

North American Free Trade Agreement, have enforceable dispute 

settlement provisions to resolve trade disagreements. Most other trade 

agreements do not contain such provisions.6

Trade Agreement 

Archives Do Not 

Contain All U.S. Trade 

Agreements Currently 

in Force

We were unable to determine the total number of trade agreements 

currently in force for several reasons. First, USTR, State, and Commerce, 

the main trade agencies, could not provide us with a definitive count of the 

number of trade agreements. While each maintains an archive that contains 

trade agreements,7

 the archives serve different purposes, and there is no 

standard definition of what constitutes a trade agreement. Second, 

Commerce’s archive is intended to contain all trade agreements, but does 

not. Finally, we found that the three archives in combination are inadequate 

for the purpose of identifying the total number of in-force trade agreements 

due to inconsistencies and record-keeping weaknesses. 

4

The North American Free Trade Agreement is a comprehensive free trade agreement 

between the United States, Canada, and Mexico that went into effect on January 1, 1994. 

5

The World Trade Organization, which was established in 1995, was created as a permanent 

organization to oversee implementation of the Uruguay Round agreements, to provide a 

forum for multilateral trade negotiations, and to settle disputes.

6

Regardless of whether trade agreements contain dispute settlement procedures, U.S. trade 

law may be used to enforce U.S. rights under bilateral and multilateral trade agreements.

7

As discussed, the Commerce and USTR archives include only trade agreements whereas 

the State archive also includes other types of international agreements.
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Archives Serve Different 

Purposes

USTR, Commerce, and State officials could not provide us with a definitive 

count of the number of trade agreements currently in force. Agency 

officials said a standard definition of what constitutes a trade agreement 

does not exist either in federal law or in interagency practice. The agencies 

provided us with data from each of their archives. However, the three 

archives were created for different purposes and, as a result, do not always 

contain the same agreements. USTR’s central archive, initiated in 1996, is 

for internal use and is intended to include all trade agreements negotiated 

by USTR; agreements negotiated by other agencies are not included.8

 The 

State Department’s archive is designed to capture all international 

agreements negotiated by federal agencies (not just trade agreements) that 

meet certain legal criteria such as those that are significant and intended to 

be legally binding. According to State and USTR officials, many trade 

agreements do not meet State’s criteria and thus are not included in State’s 

archive. The Commerce Department’s archive, made available to the public 

over the internet in early 1998, was designed to contain all trade 

agreements negotiated by federal agencies but is not complete. (See app. I 

for more information about each archive.)

Commerce Archive Is Not 

Comprehensive

Commerce’s archive does not contain all trade agreements as originally 

planned.9

 Commerce officials told us they used one or more of the 

following criteria to create their data base: (1) the parties are national 

governments and agencies or intergovernmental organizations, (2) the 

parties intended their undertaking to be binding, (3) the agreement affects 

or might affect international trade, and/or (4) one or more parties is a 

recognized territory outside the United States. To assess the archive’s 

completeness, we compared the names and dates of agreements in all three

8

The central archive was established within the Monitoring and Enforcement Unit office. As 

discussed in appendix I, the archive includes both substantive and procedural agreements. 

Most of our analysis on USTR-negotiated trade agreements in this report focuses on 

substantive agreements that afford increased foreign market access to the United States. 

9

Congress acknowledged Commerce’s intent to establish a comprehensive data base of 

trade agreements in the Conference Report to the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations 

Act, 1997 (H.R. Rep. No. 104-863, 104th Cong., 2d Sess.). The Conference Report 

accompanying Commerce’s appropriations legislation approved a reorganization of 

Commerce that established a trade compliance office to compile and utilize a 

comprehensive data base of trade agreements. 
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archives that entered into force during 1984-98.10 Commerce had only 283 

of these agreements in its archive (see table 1). We found only 71 percent of 

USTR’s agreements (that is, 180 of 252) and only 53 percent of State’s 

archived trade agreements (that is, 112-210) in the Commerce archive (see 

fig. 2).

Table 1: Trade Agreements That Entered Into Force During 1984-98, Based on USTR, 

Commerce, and State Archives

a

Figures for USTR are based on USTR’s list of substantive agreements designed to increase U.S. 

access to foreign markets or reduce foreign trade barriers.

b

Agreements in State’s archive were counted as a trade agreement if State categorized them as a 

trade agreement or if a particular type of agreement was included in USTR’s archive.

c

When more than one agency included the same agreement in its archive, the agreement was counted 

only once.

d

Three of the agreements in Commerce’s archive did not include information on when the agreement 

was signed or entered into force. Since the agreements did not match agreements in USTR or State 

archives, the latter could not be used to determine when the agreements entered into force. 

Source: GAO analysis of USTR, Commerce, and State archive records.

10We selected 1984 as a sample boundary because USTR’s archive generally does not contain 

information prior to 1984. Appendix II explains our methodology in greater detail.

Period when 

agreements entered 

into force USTRa Commerce Stateb

Total (without double

counting)c

1984-88 19 16 64 73

1989-93 97 87 71 142

1994-98 136 177 75 223

Date not providedd 0 30 3

Total 252 283 210 441
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Figure 2: The Commerce, USTR, and State Department Archives Do Not Contain All 

Trade Agreements

a

USTR substantive trade agreements that afford increased access to foreign markets or reduce foreign 

barriers and other trade-distorting practices.

Source: GAO analysis of Commerce, State, and USTR archives.

Commerce’s archive is not complete because federal agencies have not 

come together to establish agreed criteria for identifying all trade 

agreements negotiated by federal agencies, and no procedure has been 

established to secure the regular participation of agencies in forwarding 

trade agreements to Commerce. In 1997 Commerce proposed to USTR that 

an interagency group be created for these purposes, but USTR did not 

believe that such a formal process was necessary. In addition, agency 

officials have expressed conflicting views about the scope of the 

Commerce archive. For example, according to Commerce officials 

currently responsible for maintaining the data base, the archive is being 

used primarily to display trade agreements that Commerce is directly 

responsible for monitoring and enforcing. However, senior Commerce 

officials have indicated that the archive is supposed to be a comprehensive 
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data base of all trade agreements. USTR officials told us that their 

understanding was that Commerce intended to include anything that could 

be called a trade agreement regardless of which U.S. government agency 

entered into the agreement on behalf of the United States. Commerce 

officials expressed surprise at this characterization, noting that USTR has 

not automatically forwarded the texts of new trade agreements to 

Commerce for inclusion in the archive.

Archives Have 

Record-keeping Weaknesses

We were unable to identify the total number of trade agreements currently 

in force from the three archives because of a number of record-keeping 

weaknesses and inconsistencies. First, USTR’s central archive does not 

include agreements still in force that it negotiated prior to 1984 except for 

agreements that resulted from the 1967 Kennedy Round and 1979 Tokyo 

Round of multilateral trade negotiations under the General Agreement on 

Tariffs and Trade.11 Second, USTR’s archive does not include all 

enforceable agreements that USTR negotiated since 1984. For example, 

four of six agreements between 1984 and 1997 with Japan on the Nippon 

Telegraph and Telephone telecommunications procurement are not 

reflected in USTR’s archive. A USTR official told us that he believes USTR 

has included in its archive most of the enforceable agreements going back 

to 1984. Third, USTR and Commerce had not systematically updated their 

archives to remove agreements that had expired or had been effectively 

superseded by another agreement, although Commerce reports it has 

recently begun to do so.12 Fourth, Commerce’s archive contains some, but 

not all, trade agreements that are negotiated by agencies other than USTR, 

such as those establishing safety standards affecting U.S. agricultural 

commodity exports to specific countries. USTR includes in its central 

archive of trade agreements only such technical agreements that it has 

negotiated. 

11The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which entered into force in 1948, was created 

as a multilateral framework agreement to govern trade practices among member countries. 

As an organization, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade officially ended on 

December 31, 1995, after the creation of the World Trade Organization.

12In contrast, once a year State publishes a document that lists all of the international 

agreements that are in force at the beginning of the year. The list includes a title that briefly 

describes each agreement and the dates the agreement was signed, entered into force, and 

became effective (if different from the date it entered into force).
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We also observed a number of problems in all three agencies’ archives that 

suggest their records are not fully complete or accurate. For example, 

USTR’s March 1999 list of agreements and Commerce’s archive omitted an 

important automobile agreement that USTR concluded with Korea in 

October 1998. Commerce’s archive includes a 1995 Korean automotive 

agreement, along with a copy of a USTR press release dated September 

1998. However, the press release is actually one that was issued by USTR in 

1995 when the agreement for that year was concluded. Similarly, the 

Commerce archive listing for the Latvia Bilateral Investment Treaty 

displays the text of an agreement with references to Moldova instead, 

including a place for signature by a representative of Moldova. Moreover, 

the text of the agreement is unfinished in some places, and the document is 

followed by copies of letters that were exchanged between representatives 

of the United States and Moldova. Finally, State’s list of in-force agreements 

at the beginning of 1998 did not include several agreements that had 

entered into force several years earlier but did include several agreements 

that had already expired, such as a voluntary restraint agreement on 

machine tools with Japan.

Congress Is Notified 

About Many, but Not 

All, Trade Agreements

There are two principal means by which the administration formally 

notifies Congress about the conclusion of trade agreements. First, USTR 

sends Congress an annual report with a list of the names and dates of 

substantive trade agreements entered into by the United States since 1984 

that afford increased U.S. access to foreign markets or reduce foreign 

market barriers and other trade-distorting policies and practices. (USTR 

separately lists those agreements that have entered into force and those 

that have not.) The list, which was created in response to congressional 

interest, does not include substantive agreements that deal only with 

imports into the United States. It also does not include agreements 

negotiated by other agencies. According to USTR officials, the agreements 

noted in the annual report are the agreements that USTR monitors for 

compliance purposes. The USTR list contains a date for each agreement 

that typically represents either the date the agreement was signed by one or 

both of the parties or the date it entered into force. USTR does not indicate 

which type of date is reported. (For some agreements, several years 

intervene between the time an agreement is signed and the time it enters 

into force.) USTR’s list also does not identify which of the agreements have 

expired. Although USTR does not routinely provide Congress with the texts 

of the agreements it negotiates, it routinely consults with congressional 

committees in the course of negotiations, according to USTR officials. 
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Moreover, any Member of Congress can receive a copy of any agreement by 

requesting it. 

Second, as required by law, State sends Congress a copy of international 

agreements, including trade agreements, that meet certain criteria within 

60 days of the agreement’s entering into force. As directed by the 

Case-Zablocki Act and implementing regulations, State defines and applies 

criteria for deciding which agreements qualify as an “international 

agreement.” (State’s Office of Treaty Affairs performs this function.) To 

constitute an international agreement under the act, each of the following 

criteria, among others, must be met:

• There must be two or more parties (unilateral commitments do not 

qualify).

• The parties must be a state, a state agency, or an intergovernmental 

organization, and they must intend their undertaking to be legally 

binding. Agreements intended to have political or moral weight but not 

be legally binding do not qualify.

• The commitments must be considered significant. Minor or trivial 

undertakings, even if couched in legal language and form, are not 

considered as international agreements under the criteria.

• The language that sets forth the undertaking needs to be specific and 

must include objective criteria for determining enforceability. 

According to USTR and State officials, many USTR-negotiated agreements 

do not meet these criteria and thus are not provided to Congress by State. 

The officials could not provide an estimate of the number, however, 

because neither agency keeps records for this purpose and because, as 

discussed later, not all of USTR’s agreements have been reviewed by State.

USTR officials told us that agencies also use a variety of other mechanisms 

to keep Congress informed of both trade negotiations and new agreements. 

These include informal briefings and consultations with congressional 

trade committees and interested members and staff, as well as 

participation in congressional hearings and responses to congressional 

requests for information.13

13For example, USTR discusses the results of some of the trade agreements it has negotiated 

during the past few years and the progress made in efforts to negotiate certain new 

agreements in its annual report and its annual national trade estimate report.
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Not All Agreements 

Provided to Congress

Congress may not have received all of the agreements and accompanying 

documents, as required by law. Federal agencies that have negotiated an 

international agreement that might fall within the criteria established in 

State’s Case-Zablocki implementing regulations are required to transmit the 

text of the agreement to State within 20 days of the signing of the 

agreement. Once the agreement is received, State’s Office of Treaty Affairs 

reviews the document, using its criteria, and determines whether it is an 

international agreement. If so, Treaty Affairs transmits the text of the 

agreement to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House no 

later than 60 days after the agreement enters into force.14 However, in 

spring 1999 officials in Treaty Affairs told us that they believed many 

USTR-negotiated trade agreements had never been transmitted to State for 

review. According to the State officials, they had previously raised this 

issue with USTR on several occasions.

Record-keeping weaknesses at both USTR and State prevented us from 

determining whether USTR agreements that were subject to congressional 

notification requirements but that were not in State’s archive had been 

transmitted to State. (As previously indicated, State’s archive of in-force 

agreements at the end of 1998 did not include 149 of the 252 agreements 

that were in USTR’s archive.) USTR officials told us that prior to July 1999, 

responsibility within USTR for reviewing and forwarding such agreements 

was highly decentralized and that USTR had not kept systematic records of 

which agreements had been sent to State. Because of this and because of 

high staff turnover, USTR officials said they could not be certain that all 

relevant agreements had been reviewed and that all reportable agreements 

had been forwarded to State. State officials advised us that they do not 

keep a record of agreements received and that once they determine that an 

agreement is not an international agreement under their criteria, State does 

not systematically retain copies of such agreements. Thus, State could not 

tell us whether it had previously received or reviewed USTR agreements 

that were not in its archive.

In mid-July 1999, while our review was underway, USTR established a new 

system for collecting newly concluded USTR trade agreements and 

transmitting them to State. Overall control of the system is now centralized 

in one office, and a record is being kept of each agreement transmitted to 

14In recent years, State has not always met the 60-day transmittal requirement because some 

agencies have been late in forwarding completed agreements to Treaty Affairs. Eighteen 

agreements were reported late in 1995, 13 in 1996, 11 in 1997, and 6 in 1998. 
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State. USTR officials told us that they intend to transmit to State all 

agreements USTR concludes. (Unlike previous practice, USTR will not first 

review an agreement to assess whether the agreement might possibly be 

considered an international agreement under State’s criteria.) In October 

1999, State’s Treaty Affairs Office told us that the office had received the 

texts of six agreements through USTR’s new system. The office had 

determined that one of the agreements had qualified for inclusion in its 

archive, four did not qualify, and one was still being reviewed.

USTR’s new procedures do not address previously negotiated USTR 

agreements that may not have been transmitted to State. During our review, 

USTR provided State, in May 1999, with a list of the names and dates of 

about 250 substantive agreements that USTR had negotiated since 1984 and 

requested Treaty Affairs to advise USTR of any agreements it would like to 

review as a possible international agreement under the criteria. In October 

1999, State told us that it needed to examine the text of any agreements on 

this list that were not already in State’s archive in order to apply its criteria. 

As of late November 1999, State’s Treaty Affairs Office had not provided us 

with data on the number of agreements (not already in its archive) it had 

reviewed to determine if they qualified as an international agreement under 

the act.

Many, but Not All, 

Trade Agreements Are 

Made Available to the 

Public

While federal officials note that improvements in public access to trade 

agreement texts have occurred during the past 2 years, the public does not 

have comprehensive and ready access to all trade agreements. Commerce 

and State make copies of the texts of most agreements they have in their 

archives available to the public. USTR does not routinely provide copies to 

the public.

Commerce’s Archive Is 

Useful But Has Limitations

Commerce’s internet-accessible trade agreement data base was created 

specifically to provide the public with a government source for trade 

agreement information. The data base, which Commerce began compiling 

in 1996, went online in mid-February 1998. According to Commerce, the 

archive is intended for use by U.S. businesses; trade lawyers and 

practitioners; federal, state, and municipal government trade policy 

officials; and the general public. The data base allows users to review the 

texts of agreements and to access, on the same site, commercial 

information about market conditions and market access barriers in foreign
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countries.15 (See fig. 3.) The data base has a number of useful features, such 

as enabling users to search by title, country, and keyword. In addition, the 

web site allows U.S. companies to file complaints electronically when they 

have problems gaining access to foreign markets or believe trade 

agreements are being violated. (An electronic form is provided that enables 

users to ask questions about trade agreement implementation and 

commitments and report possible violations of trade agreements.) 

Commerce guarantees an initial response to any query or complaint about a 

trade agreement within 10 days. According to Commerce officials, the web 

site service is especially helpful to small- and medium-sized firms that do 

not have Washington offices and cannot afford to hire Washington lawyers.

15Country information includes commercial guides, country reports on economic policy and 

trade practices, national trade estimate reports, and trade policy review summaries. 

According to the Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, Commerce is also 

working on writing plain language, “how-to” guides that will tell firms how to use trade 

agreements to expand exports, how to know if they are being treated unfairly, and where to 

go for help.
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Figure 3: Department of Commerce’s Internet Site Page for Accessing Trade 

Agreements and Related Information

Source: Department of Commerce. 
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Although the creation of the data base has considerably expanded public 

access to the content of trade agreements, users may not be aware of the 

data base’s limitations. First, the site does not inform users that the data 

base does not include all trade agreements nor explain the basis by which 

agreements were selected for the archive. Second, Commerce does not 

guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the agreements—Commerce 

uses a disclaimer that the text is for general reference purposes only.16

Commerce officials noted that since they do not retain possession of the 

original copy of most agreements, they are not in a position to provide such 

a guarantee. We observed, while examining all the agreements in the data 

base, that some agreements did not contain the complete texts of the 

agreements. Further, the text of one agreement that we reviewed was for a 

different country than that listed in the table of contents. When the data 

base was initially being developed, Commerce recommended to USTR that 

a formal mechanism be put in place to guarantee the authenticity of 

agreements. The proposal was not implemented. According to a USTR 

official, the agency concluded it would not be cost-effective to do so; if 

users needed such assurances, they could contact USTR on a case-by-case 

basis. Third, the contents page does not include information on the dates 

that the agreement was signed and entered into force or which agency or 

agencies negotiated the agreement. Consequently, to secure this 

information, one must review the text of each agreement. Fourth, the data 

base does not tell the user if an agreement has expired or been effectively 

replaced by more recent agreements. 

How Agreements in State’s 

Archive of International 

Agreements Are Made 

Available

State makes copies of its agreements available to nongovernmental users 

by two means, according to State officials. First, State arranges for 

publication of its agreements by the Government Printing Office.17 An 

agreement is initially printed as a pamphlet in the series titled Treaties and 

Other International Acts Series. This publication is recognized by statute as 

legal proof of the text’s authenticity for domestic law purposes, and State 

takes steps to ensure that the printed text is a verbatim reproduction of the 

authentic text in all of the agreement’s languages, except for multilateral 

agreements concluded within international organizations. Subsequently, 

16“Completeness” refers to both the text of an agreement and any accompanying documents 

(such as agreed minutes, side letters, or exchanges of notes).

17Under 22 C.F.R. 181.8(a)(1) through (9), the Secretary of State may determine that the 

publication of certain categories of agreements is not required, if certain legal criteria are 

met, such as that the agreements are of a limited or specialized nature or are classified.
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the agreement is published in the publication titled United States Treaties 

and Other International Agreements. Both publications are sent to 

qualifying federal depository libraries. However, due to budget constraints, 

State has not prepared agreements for publishing until several years after 

their negotiation. In June 1999, depository libraries were receiving the 

pamphlet version of agreements that had been signed in June 1994. State 

officials confirmed that these were the most recently published 

agreements. 

Second, when State sends a copy of an agreement to Congress, State 

simultaneously makes copies available to interested parties through its 

Freedom of Information Act office. According to a State official, several 

publishing firms regularly secure copies of these agreements as they 

become available and subsequently make them available for purchase in 

one of several forms. For example, Oceana Publications, Inc., a publisher 

of international legal materials, makes texts of the agreements available 

both online and by CD ROM. According to Oceana, online users can search 

for agreements and review and print texts for as little as $37.50 for each 

15 minutes. Oceana charges $500 per year to obtain quarterly updates of 

the full text of treaties and agreements that the United States has signed 

since January 1990. According to Oceana, this service makes treaties 

accessible within 90 days of receipt by the Senate. Lexis-Nexis, a provider 

of legal, government, and other information, makes copies of the 

agreements available online to subscribers to its service. Lexis-Nexis 

obtains the agreements from Oceana via a licensing arrangement. 

According to a Lexis-Nexis spokesperson, the agreements that it posts are 

at least several years old.

If an agreement is deemed by State to be highly important, State also sends 

the agreement to the American Society of International Law and 

encourages it to publish the agreement in International Legal Materials. 

The Director of State’s Treaty Affairs Office told us that State has plans to 

make the texts of its agreements available to the public at no charge via the 

Government Printing Office’s internet site. Agreements would be posted 

shortly after they are sent to Congress. The Director said the Government 

Printing Office has agreed to do this but that he does not know when 

service will begin.

State has several other ways for the public to obtain summary information 

on trade agreements included in its archive of international agreements. 

State publishes a book, Treaties in Force, that lists the names and dates of 

treaties and other international agreements of the United States on record 
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in the Department of State on the first day of the year, as well as the 

principal subject matter of agreements. The publication can be viewed or 

downloaded from State’s web site. (The January 1, 1999, publication was 

made available in early October 1999. At that time, the report had not yet 

been printed by the Government Printing Office.) Agreements that are 

judged to address primarily trade matters are classified under subject 

headings such as “commerce,” “trade,” or “trade and commerce.” We found 

that most USTR-negotiated agreements that were included in State’s 1999 

publication of Treaties in Force were classified under one of the trade 

headings. However, some USTR agreements were classified differently by 

State. For example, State classified bilateral investment treaties under the 

subject of “investment” and intellectual property agreements under the 

heading “intellectual property.” Consequently, the public cannot rely solely 

on State’s subject headings to identify all trade agreements in its archive. 

Another source for information about international agreements is State’s 

online listing of agreements called Current Treaty Actions. This source lists 

the names and dates of agreements that were either signed and/or entered 

into force recently. Agreements are listed by year and within each year by 

the month when they are listed in the source. However, the source does not 

categorize agreements by subject and does not include a search capability. 

In addition, there is generally a 2-month lag between when an agreement is 

signed or enters into force and when it is listed in Current Treaty Actions. 

Information in Current Treaty Actions also appears in the printed as well as 

the online version of the State Department publication Dispatch, which is a 

monthly magazine providing major speeches and congressional testimony 

from the Department.

Treaties in Force, Current Treaty Actions, and Dispatch do not describe the 

Case-Zablocki Act criteria used to select agreements for inclusion in the 

publications. In addition, the latter two publications do not provide any 

direct information on how users can access copies of the agreements.

USTR Generally Does Not 

Provide the Public With 

Direct Access to Trade 

Agreements

USTR’s trade agreement archive is not open to the public, since it was 

created to serve the internal needs of the agency. USTR principally makes 

its trade agreements available to the public via Commerce’s data base, 

according to USTR officials. However, we observed in our review of the 

USTR and Commerce archives that about 30 percent of USTR’s agreements 

were not found in Commerce’s archive. USTR publishes a list of its 

substantive trade agreements (since 1984) in its annual report and typically 

issues a press release upon the conclusion of negotiations. USTR’s internet 
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site also contains facsimile copies of a small number of recent trade 

agreements. USTR officials also explained that if the public requests a copy 

of a trade agreement from USTR directly, they will usually be directed to 

the Commerce trade data base. If the information is not otherwise 

available, however, USTR will provide a copy upon request.

Conclusions Fully securing the benefits of trade liberalization depends, in part, on the 

ability of both private businesses and the public to quickly and easily 

access the terms and conditions of the numerous trade agreements to 

which the United States is a party. However, such access does not currently 

exist. Commerce’s archive is the largest of the three archives maintained by 

State, Commerce, and the U.S. Trade Representative in terms of the 

number of trade agreements it contains and is the most accessible to the 

public. However, the archive is incomplete because it does not contain at 

least 158 agreements that we identified in the USTR and State archives. In 

addition, Commerce does not apply consistent criteria in determining what 

agreements to include in the archive, some texts in the archive contain 

factual errors, and none of the texts can be considered authoritative. As a 

result, private businesses may not be taking full advantage of the benefits 

secured by trade agreements because they are not aware of them, or may 

be misinformed about the terms of those agreements. 

In addition, the U.S. Trade Representative and State do not know whether 

USTR has transmitted all of its trade agreements to State that should be 

reported for State’s archive of treaties and other international agreements. 

As a result, State may not have transmitted the text of certain trade 

agreements to Congress as required by law. Lack of information on the 

terms and conditions of these agreements could impede Congress’ 

oversight efforts to determine whether trade agreements are being fully 

implemented.

Recommendations In order to improve the accuracy and completeness of its trade agreement 

archive, we recommend that the Secretary of Commerce

• clarify that the archive is intended to contain all trade agreements;

• establish, in consultation with USTR, State, the U.S. Department of 

Agriculture, and other appropriate federal agencies, clear criteria for the 

types of agreements to be included; 
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• develop procedures, in consultation with other federal agencies that 

negotiate trade agreements, to ensure that these agencies regularly 

forward trade agreements to Commerce; and

• describe at its internet site the criteria used in determining which 

agreements are included in the archive and procedures by which users 

can obtain authenticated copies of the agreements.

We also recommend that the U.S. Trade Representative, as chair of the 

Trade Policy Staff Committee, ask the group to consider how its member 

agencies can assist Commerce’s efforts to obtain accurate and timely 

information on trade agreements concluded by those agencies.

To comply with the statutory requirement that Congress receive copies of 

all agreements that qualify as international agreements, we recommend 

that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative transmit to State’s Office of 

Treaty Affairs the text of each substantive trade agreement that it has 

negotiated that is currently in force and that does not appear in State’s 

present record of in-force international agreements. We also recommend 

that the Secretary of State direct the Office of Treaty Affairs to review each 

of these agreements to determine whether the agreement is an 

international agreement under State’s criteria and, if so, notify Congress of 

such agreements no later than 60 days after receiving them. 

Agency Comments and 

Our Evaluation

We requested comments on a draft of this report from the Departments of 

Commerce and State and from USTR. State and Commerce provided 

written comments, which are reprinted in appendix III and appendix IV. 

State’s letter did not raise any issues concerning the report. We obtained 

oral comments from USTR officials, including the Deputy General Counsel. 

Commerce, State, and USTR also provided technical comments, which we 

incorporated as appropriate.

Commerce characterized the report as very helpful and said it would 

consider our recommendations carefully. While Commerce agreed that our 

count of 158 agreements not found in the Commerce data base was 

accurate, they explained that more than half of these agreements had either 

expired or had been superseded by other agreements. Commerce noted its 

data base is designed to include agreements that are currently in force. 

Commerce also stated that some of the remaining agreements were not 

included in its data base because they did not meet its criteria for trade 

agreements or had not been loaded into Commerce’s data base at the time 

of our review. Commerce acknowledged that it had overlooked about two 
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dozen agreements that should have been included in its data base. We 

modified our report to reflect that many of the 158 agreements that were 

not included in Commerce’s data base had either expired or were 

superseded. However, Commerce’s acknowledgment that it had overlooked 

some agreements and that it may use different criteria from State and 

USTR for defining trade agreements supports our conclusion that 

improvements are needed to eliminate record-keeping weaknesses and 

establish, in consultation with other agencies, clear criteria for the types of 

agreements to be included in Commerce’s data base.

USTR officials said that overall they found the report to be balanced and 

fair. However, USTR expressed concern about our recommendation that 

USTR, as chair of the Trade Policy Staff Committee, lead an interagency 

effort to assist Commerce in obtaining accurate information on trade 

agreements from other agencies. USTR officials said that agreements 

negotiated by other agencies are generally addressed outside the Trade 

Policy Staff Committee and that the Committee has no authority to direct 

other agencies to provide agreements to Commerce. They noted that the 

process would not work very well unless an agency with more overarching 

responsibility, such as the National Economic Council or the Office of 

Management and Budget, issued a directive. We continue to believe, 

however, that our recommendation is appropriate since one of USTR’s 

functions, as chair of the Trade Policy Staff Committee, is to monitor and 

administer the trade agreements program.18 Moreover, legislation regarding 

the Committee states it should draw upon the resources of its member 

agencies to the maximum extent practicable.19 If the Committee is not 

successful in securing voluntary cooperation from its member agencies, it 

should consider working with the National Economic Council or the Office 

of Management and Budget to develop a more formal mechanism for 

obtaining the needed trade agreements information.

We are sending copies of this report to appropriate congressional 

committees. We are also sending copies of this report to the Honorable 

Madeleine K. Albright, Secretary of State; the Honorable William M. Daley,

18USTR’s responsibilities as chair of this committee are enumerated in Executive 

Order 12188, January 2, 1980, signed by President Jimmy Carter.

1919 U.S.C. 1872(c).
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Secretary of Commerce; and the Honorable Charlene Barshefsky, 

U.S. Trade Representative. Copies will also be made available to others 

upon request.

If you or your staff have any questions about this report, please contact me 

on (202) 512-3655. Key GAO contacts and staff acknowledgments are listed 

in appendix V. 

Sincerely yours,

Susan S. Westin, Associate Director

International Relations and Trade Issues
Page 26 GAO/NSIAD-00-24 International Trade

Appendix I

U.S. Trade Representative, State, and Apendxies

Commerce Central Archives of Trade 

Agreements ApendxIi

The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) and the Departments of State and 

Commerce each maintain a central archive containing a large number of 

U.S. trade agreements. However, the three archives were created for 

different purposes and only partially overlap. In this appendix, we describe 

the three archives and their contents.

USTR’s Trade 

Agreements Archive

USTR began establishing a central archive of its trade agreements in early 

1996, at the same time that it was creating a central office for monitoring 

and enforcing trade agreements. According to USTR officials, up to that 

point institutional memory and record-keeping regarding trade agreements 

had not been very good. Given the increasing number of trade agreements 

negotiated in recent years and the general, growing interest in monitoring 

and enforcing trade agreements, USTR considered it important to improve 

record-keeping.

According to USTR officials, the central archive, which was set up for 

USTR’s internal purposes, is a work in progress. The first goal was to make 

sure that the archive contained all agreements negotiated by the Clinton 

administration. According to the officials, this objective has been met. The 

second goal was to capture all agreements going back to 1984; USTR 

maintains that goal is probably about 90 percent realized. Although USTR 

was established in 1962, its central archive does not include U.S. 

trade-related agreements it negotiated prior to 1984, nor those negotiated 

by other U.S. government agencies, with the exception of 40 bilateral 

friendship, commerce, and navigation treaties concluded between 1815 and 

1968 and two major multilateral trade agreements concluded in 1967 and 

1979, respectively. The archive includes (1) agreements that have entered 

into force, (2) agreements that have not yet entered into force because one 

or more of the parties have not taken necessary actions to approve them, 

and (3) agreements that previously entered into force but have since 

expired.

USTR does not employ a formal definition of a trade agreement in deciding 

whether to include an agreement in its archive. According to a USTR 

official, since all of USTR’s work is related to trade and all agreements in its 

archive are USTR-concluded agreements, any agreement in its archive is 

necessarily considered a trade agreement.

USTR’s central archive includes substantive trade agreements, procedural 

agreements, and declarations. Substantive agreements are those that 

include commitments on matters of substance that USTR considers to be 
Appendix I

U.S. Trade Representative, State, and 

Commerce Central Archives of Trade 

Agreements

Page 27 GAO/NSIAD-00-24 International Trade

enforceable. Procedural agreements, such as trade and investment 

framework agreements, typically establish bilateral or other nonbinding 

consultation mechanisms. According to a USTR official, declarations 

usually occur in the context of large ministerial meetings regarding the 

negotiation or implementation of trade agreements and are issued at the 

conclusion of the meetings. Declarations sometimes include substantive 

undertakings but more often are process oriented and take stock of 

countries’ positions at the time the document is issued. Procedural 

agreements and declarations are important, the official said, because they 

often help move countries toward concluding substantive agreements.

USTR maintains three principal lists of the trade agreements that are 

contained in its central archive. The first, or master list, refers to all USTR 

agreements that have been collected to date, including substantive, 

procedural, and declaration agreements generally going back to 1984. The 

most recent updated list available to us in August 1999 was for the period 

ending May 29, 1998. The second list includes all agreements negotiated by 

the Clinton administration. In September 1999, USTR provided us with a 

copy that included all agreements from January 1, 1993, through July 1, 

1999. The third list is restricted to substantive agreements that have 

entered into force since 1984 that afford increased foreign market access or 

reduce foreign barriers and other trade-distorting policies and practices. 

This list is reported to Congress each year as part of USTR’s annual report.

We compared the three lists of agreements and found some 

inconsistencies. For example, we found that the master list of agreements 

did not include 16 agreements included in USTR’s list of substantive 

agreements entered into between 1984 and May 29, 1998. Our analysis also 

suggested that many procedural agreements and declarations that were 

concluded between 1984 and 1992 may not be included in the total archive. 

USTR officials confirmed that the total archive is incomplete and that 

archiving procedural agreements and declarations negotiated prior to 1993 

has not been an agency priority.
Appendix I

U.S. Trade Representative, State, and 

Commerce Central Archives of Trade 

Agreements

Page 28 GAO/NSIAD-00-24 International Trade

Trade Agreements in 

State Department’s 

Archive of 

International 

Agreements 

By law1 the Secretary of State is required to archive and publish all treaties 

and all international agreements other than treaties (called “executive 

agreements”)2

 to which the United States is a party that are concluded 

during each calendar year. State does so in the publication Treaties and 

Other International Acts Series. In addition, under the Case-Zablocki Act, 

the Secretary of State is required to transmit to Congress the text of any 

executive agreement as soon as practicable after such agreement has 

entered into force but no later than 60 days thereafter. Federal agencies 

that enter into an executive agreement on behalf of the United States are 

required to transmit the text of such an agreement to the State Department 

not later than 20 days after the agreement is signed. Federal agencies are 

also required to consult with the Secretary of State prior to signing or 

concluding an international agreement.3

The State Department is afforded some discretion in deciding what 

constitutes an international agreement to be published and notified to 

Congress. As a result, not all trade and other agreements are included in 

State’s archive. According to State Department regulations, some of the key 

criteria that it uses in deciding whether an agreement is an international 

agreement (within the meaning of the previously cited laws) are the 

following:

1

U.S.C. 112a.

2

There are two procedures under the Constitution through which the United States enters 

into international agreements. Any international agreement whose entry into force requires 

advice and consent from the U.S. Senate is a “treaty.” In addition to a treaty, the term 

“executive agreement” is used to refer to international agreements concluded by the 

executive branch (a) pursuant to or in accordance with existing legislation or a prior treaty, 

(b) subject to congressional approval or implementation, and/or (c) under and in 

accordance with the President’s Constitutional powers. 

3

In situations where an interagency committee has been established for the purpose of 

approving agreements, the consultation requirement may be satisfied if the Secretary of 

State or her designee has been consulted in his or her capacity as a member of the 

committee. See 22 C.F.R. 181.4(g). 
Appendix I

U.S. Trade Representative, State, and 

Commerce Central Archives of Trade 

Agreements

Page 29 GAO/NSIAD-00-24 International Trade

• Identity and intention of the parties. A party to an international 

agreement must be a state, a state agency, or an intergovernmental 

organization. The parties must intend their undertaking to be legally 

binding,4

 and not merely of political or personal effect. Documents 

intended to have political or moral weight, but not intended to be legally 

binding, are not considered international agreements.

• Significance of the arrangement. Minor or trivial undertakings, even if 

couched in legal language and form, are not considered international 

agreements. In deciding what level of significance must be reached 

before a particular arrangement becomes an international agreement, 

the entire context of the transaction and the expectations and intent of 

the parties must be taken into account. 

• Specificity, including objective criteria for determining enforceability. 

International agreements require precision and specificity in the 

language setting forth the undertakings of the parties. Undertakings 

couched in vague or very general terms containing no objective criteria 

for determining enforceability or performance are not normally 

considered international agreements. However, the intent of the parties 

is the key factor in assessing whether agreements are enforceable.

• Necessity for two or more parties. While unilateral commitments on 

occasion may be legally binding, they do not constitute international 

agreements. Care should be taken to examine whether a particular 

undertaking is truly unilateral in nature or is part of larger bilateral or 

multilateral undertakings.5

Department of 

Commerce’s Trade 

Agreements Archive

Commerce began creating a trade agreement archive in 1996 along with the 

establishment of the Trade Compliance Center (TCC). According to a 

former Commerce official, TCC was established because the U.S. 

government had engaged in a continuing process of negotiating new trade 

agreements but had not focused on monitoring and enforcing them. At that 

time, the location of even the most basic trade agreements and the number 

of existing trade agreements were unknown, the official said. According to 

the Director of TCC, the original intent of TCC was to assemble all 

4

USTR officials advised us that USTR’s standard for what is “legally binding” with regard to 

agreements that USTR negotiates may not be equivalent to the standard the State 

Department uses in considering whether an agreement should be considered enforceable 

for purposes of the Case-Zablocki Act.

5

See 22 C.F.R. 181.2(1)-(4).
Appendix I

U.S. Trade Representative, State, and 

Commerce Central Archives of Trade 

Agreements

Page 30 GAO/NSIAD-00-24 International Trade

U.S.-negotiated trade agreements in one place and make them accessible to 

the public via the internet. To create this archive, TCC began with USTR’s 

1995 list of all USTR trade-related agreements and USTR’s sub-list of 

substantive agreements that focus on increasing access to foreign markets. 

TCC then sought to obtain copies of these agreements from USTR. TCC 

obtained additional trade agreements from other Commerce Department 

offices. The documents were converted into an electronic and searchable 

format via a scanning process.

In June 1997, TCC proposed to USTR that the two agencies convene an 

interagency group to conduct a coordinated search for international trade 

agreement texts and accompanying papers. Under the proposal, the group 

would have employed a working definition of a trade agreement, and a 

process would have been agreed upon for certifying that a copy of any 

agreement provided to the TCC data base was an exact copy of the signed 

original. TCC also proposed that Commerce and USTR develop a schedule 

for locating, authenticating, and delivering the trade agreements to TCC 

and that the group meet monthly to assess progress. However, USTR 

officials did not believe such a formal process was necessary, and no action 

was taken to implement it. Instead, according to USTR officials, USTR 

agreed to certify the authenticity of trade agreements on a case-by-case 

basis and began to informally provide newly negotiated trade agreements 

to TCC for inclusion in its data base.

According to TCC officials, trade agreements are included in its data base if 

the documents meet one or more of the following criteria: (1) the parties 

are national governments and agencies or intergovernmental organizations, 

(2) the parties intended their undertaking to be binding, (3) the agreement 

affects or might affect international trade, and/or (4) one or more parties is 

a recognized territory outside the United States. The officials said that 

these criteria represent the TCC’s working level definition of a trade 

agreement and do not represent either an official Commerce or U.S. 

government definition. They noted that applying the definition involves 

making judgments.

According to TCC officials, TCC updates its archive by (1) reviewing the 

list of USTR trade agreements published in successive annual reports, 

(2) consulting with USTR and other Commerce Department staff, 

(3) reading press releases, (4) perusing trade-related web sites, and 

(5) interacting with parties in the private sector. The Commerce archive 

was made accessible to the public in February 1998 via a Commerce 

Department web site on the internet.
Appendix I

U.S. Trade Representative, State, and 

Commerce Central Archives of Trade 

Agreements

Page 31 GAO/NSIAD-00-24 International Trade

TCC officials admit that the contents of their data base are not 

comprehensive and that they are still trying to determine what types of 

agreements should be included in the data base. During our review, we 

identified and discussed with TCC officials some inconsistencies that we 

found. They agreed, for example, that some but not all agriculture and 

bilateral textile agreements, and antidumping suspension notices, are 

included in their data base. They also said that although they had tried to 

make the data base strictly trade or investment related, the data base 

included some other agreements, such as scientific or technical 

agreements, made among regulatory officials of the U.S. and other 

governments, that might have a trade impact.

TCC’s Director told us that he does not see TCC maintaining a complete 

archive of all trade agreements but rather only those trade agreements for 

which Commerce is responsible and should be held accountable. In his 

view, USTR is responsible for maintaining a complete archive, and the TCC 

data base is primarily a tool for the Commerce Department. However, other 

Commerce officials told us that the TCC archive should be a 

comprehensive archive of trade agreements in general. In addition, in 

testimony before the Senate Finance Committee in February 1999, the 

Under Secretary for International Trade asserted that one of TCC’s major 

functions is to provide information to American companies about trade 

agreements, including how to use them, and how to know if their rights 

under these agreements are being violated. Commerce noted in agency 

comments on this report that its archive’s focus is on nonagricultural trade, 

despite the inclusion of some agricultural trade agreements. Commerce 

says it will consult with the Departments of Agriculture and State, as well 

as USTR, to develop a comprehensive policy on how these agreements 

should be handled.

In discussing TCC’s data base, USTR officials told us that USTR (1) has 

agreed to provide trade agreements to TCC for inclusion in TCC’s database, 

(2) understood that TCC intended to include anything that could be 

considered a trade agreement regardless of which U.S. government agency 

negotiated it on behalf of the United States, and (3) considered that TCC’s 

data base would be a main source for public access to U.S. trade 

agreements. Further, they told us that USTR considers its archive to be a 

subset of TCC’s data base.
Page 32 GAO/NSIAD-00-24 International Trade

Appendix II

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology ApendxiI

The Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee asked us to 

determine (1) the number of trade agreements the United States is party to, 

(2) the way in which the executive branch notifies Congress about its trade 

agreements, and (3) the extent to which the public has ready access to 

trade agreements from government sources. 

To determine the number of trade agreements the United States is a party 

to, we reviewed documentation and interviewed officials at USTR and the 

Departments of State and Commerce. Since these agencies do not employ a 

common definition of a trade agreement, and the criteria they use in 

collecting data on trade agreements vary, the agencies could not provide us 

with a total count of how many trade agreements are currently in force. To 

approximate the number of agreements, we reviewed lists of the 

agreements in the archives of USTR, State, and Commerce and sought to 

create a master list that eliminated double- or triple-counting of the same 

agreement. We largely did this by incorporating information on the names, 

dates, and partners of each agreement in each agency’s data base and 

comparing the results. To reconcile the lists, we reviewed the texts of the 

agreements in Commerce’s data base. We did not verify whether the USTR 

and State lists fully reflected the contents of the archives.

We collected information on agreements that entered into force from 

January 1, 1984, through December 31, 1998. We could not go back farther 

than 1984 because USTR’s central archive generally does not include (with 

two exceptions) agreements that it negotiated prior to 1984. We tried to 

identify only agreements that were still in force on December 31, 1998, but 

were not able to fully do so because of inadequate documentation in the 

Commerce and USTR archives.

From USTR’s archive, we included all agreements that USTR officials 

identified as being substantive agreements that afford the United States 

increased foreign market access or reduce foreign barriers and other tradedistorting policies and practices. We excluded procedural agreements that 

lack enforceable provisions on increasing market access or reducing trade 

barriers. We also excluded agreements that USTR refers to as 

“declarations.” Declarations, according to USTR, usually occur in the 

context of large ministerial meetings. They sometimes include substantive 

points but more often are process oriented and take stock of where the 

countries are at the time a document is issued. If substantive points are 

included, they are not considered enforceable by USTR.
Appendix II

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

Page 33 GAO/NSIAD-00-24 International Trade

From State’s archive, which includes a wide variety of international 

agreements, we included agreements that were categorized by State as 

either a “trade” or “trade and commerce” agreement. In addition, we 

included agreements categorized under a different subject heading if the 

agreement appeared in either the USTR or Commerce data bases. We did 

not include agreements categorized by State as customs agreements. Based 

on criteria that State uses, any agreement in its data base is one judged by 

State to include significant commitments by both parties and to be legally 

binding.

We included most documents that appeared in Commerce’s trade 

agreements data base. We excluded some documents that clearly were not 

trade agreements, that did not fall within the time period of our review, or 

that had not entered into force. According to Commerce, its archive 

contains the texts of trade agreements. According to Commerce officials, 

the data base includes agreements that meet any or all of the following 

criteria: (1) the parties are national governments and agencies or 

intergovernmental organizations, (2) the parties intend their undertaking to 

be binding, (3) the agreement affects or may affect international trade, 

and/or (4) one or more parties is a recognized territory outside the United 

States. According to Commerce officials, Commerce’s archive also 

excludes declarations.

To determine the way in which the executive branch notifies Congress 

about its trade agreements, we reviewed statutes and regulations 

pertaining to trade policy and procedures for notifying Congress of 

international agreements. In addition, we interviewed agency officials from 

USTR, Commerce, State, and the Department of Agriculture.

To determine the extent to which the public has easy access to trade 

agreements from government sources, we examined Commerce’s internet 

trade data base web site; reviewed State publications and its internet site 

containing information on international agreements; and inspected USTR’s 

internet site. We also interviewed agency officials from Commerce, State, 

and USTR. In addition, we spoke with several companies that publish 

international agreements and accessed the internet sites of Oceana and 

Lexis-Nexis for additional information on their services.

We did our work from June 1998 through November 1999 in accordance 

with generally accepted government auditing standards.
Page 34 GAO/NSIAD-00-24 International Trade

Appendix III

Comments From the Department of State ApendxIi
Page 35 GAO/NSIAD-00-24 International Trade

Appendix IV

Comments From the Department of 

Commerce ApendxIVi

Note: GAO comments 

supplementing those in the 

report text appear at the 

end of this appendix.

See comment 1.

See comment 2.
Appendix IV

Comments From the Department of 

Commerce

Page 36 GAO/NSIAD-00-24 International Trade

See comment 3.

See comment 4.
Appendix IV

Comments From the Department of 

Commerce

Page 37 GAO/NSIAD-00-24 International Trade

The following are GAO’s comments on the Department of Commerce’s 

letter dated November 24, 1999.

GAO Comments 1. Commerce’s explanation for why its archive does not contain 158 of the 

441 agreements that we identified in the USTR, Commerce, and State 

archives is based on Commerce’s analysis of a list of the 158 agreements we 

provided to them. Since we had also identified instances in which the USTR 

and State archives contained agreements that were no longer in force or 

had been superseded by other agreements, we accept Commerce’s 

explanation for the majority of the missing agreements. 

2. Commerce reported that the remainder of the missing agreements either 

did not meet Commerce’s criteria for inclusion, had not yet been loaded 

into the data base, or had been overlooked. Since Commerce did not 

identify to us the particular agreements in each category, we cannot 

comment specifically on its response. However, Commerce elsewhere 

notes that it is taking steps to clarify the criteria for including agreements 

in its data base and improve its accuracy. Such steps will address our 

concern about the utility of the data base.

3. We modified our report to acknowledge Commerce’s intent to resolve 

the issue of whether or not agriculture agreements should be included in 

the Commerce data base.

4. We noted in our report that Commerce has begun periodic reviews of its 

data base to remove obsolete agreements.
Page 38 GAO/NSIAD-00-24 International Trade

Appendix V

GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments ApendxVi

GAO Contacts Elizabeth Sirois (202) 512-8989

Anthony Moran (202) 512-8645

Acknowledgments In addition to those named above, Shirley Brothwell, Wayne Ferris, Kim 

Frankena, and Katharine Woodward made key contributions to this report.

(711346) Letr
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