Congress has led both U.S. and international efforts to eliminate severe forms of trafficking in persons, particularly with its enactment of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 ( P.L. 106-386 ). Division A of that act, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA), established U.S. antitrafficking policy to (1) prevent trafficking, (2) protect trafficking victims, and (3) prosecute and punish traffickers (known as the three Ps). A key element of the TVPA's foreign policy objectives involved a new requirement for the Secretary of State to produce an annual report on human trafficking and to rank foreign governments based on their antitrafficking efforts. In the ensuing reports, which the State Department titled as Trafficking in Persons (TIP) reports, the department developed a ranking system in which the best countries were identified as Tier 1 and the worst Tier 3. Moreover, the TVPA stipulated that the worst performers (Tier 3 countries) in the TIP Report could be subject to potential restrictions on certain types of U.S. foreign aid and other U.S. and multilateral funds—a policy that is intended to motivate countries to avoid Tier 3 by prioritizing antitrafficking efforts. The TIP Report's annual release remains a topic of widespread interest among international and domestic stakeholders, including Congress. Since the TVPA's enactment 17 years ago, Congress has continued to adjust the requirements associated with how countries are ranked in the TIP Report, as well as the policy consequences of such rankings. (See Figure 1 below.) These changes were often the result of congressional dissatisfaction with some aspect of the TIP Report: Due to difficulty discerning differences among Tier 2 countries, Congress modified the TVPA in 2003 to create a special watch list, composed of countries that deserve enhanced scrutiny. Out of concern that countries were listed for too many consecutive years on the special watch list, Congress modified the TVPA in 2008 to limit the number of years a country may remain on it. In response to the plight of children exploited in armed conflict, Congress modified the TVPA in 2008 to require the State Department to identify countries whose governments recruit and use child soldiers. With the objective of linking U.S. trade policy to antitrafficking outcomes, Congress in 2015 prohibited Tier 3 countries from participating in authorized trade negotiations. As a result of greater awareness of antitrafficking best practices, Congress has incrementally expanded its expectations for governments to conduct serious and sustained effor ts to address human trafficking. In light of ongoing congressional scrutiny of the State Department's TIP Report and its country ranking process, several bills in the 115 th Congress have been introduced to further modify requirements associated with the TIP Report. Some of these proposed changes could significantly change—and at least temporarily complicate—the current TIP Report's methodology. A critical question is whether further changes to the TIP Report's methodology will incentivize countries to boost their antitrafficking efforts or, in contrast, may erode the legitimacy of the TIP Report as a credible tool to advocate for human trafficking concerns. This CRS report describes the legislative provisions that govern the U.S. Department of State's production of the annual TIP Report, reviews country ranking trends in the TIP Report, and identifies recent congressional oversight of and legislative activity to modify the TIP Report. Answers to selected frequently asked questions (FAQs) are included throughout the report. The contents of each annual TIP Report are governed by two provisions, one in the TVPA, as amended, and a second in the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 (CSPA). In addition, current law requires the President and the Secretary of State to prepare related follow-on documentation for certain categories of countries. These include reporting requirements that were added to the TVPA as part of TVPA reauthorization acts, as well as requirements contained in the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015 (TPA), as amended. The TVPA, as amended, establishes the core contents of the TIP Report. Specifically, it requires the Secretary of State to submit to appropriate congressional committees an annual report, due not later than June 1 each year, which describes, on a country-by-country basis: government efforts to eliminate severe forms of trafficking in persons; the nature and scope of trafficking in persons in each country; and trends in each government's efforts to combat trafficking. Central to the TVPA's reporting requirements is a set of country lists, based on whether governments are achieving four minimum standards that the law prescribes for the elimination of severe forms of trafficking in persons. Specifically, the TVPA requires the report to include a list of countries whose governments fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of severe forms of trafficking in persons; although the TVPA does not use the tier nomenclature, TIP Reports describe this list as Tier 1. (See Table 1 below.) a list of countries whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards but are making si gnificant efforts to become compliant; TIP Reports describe this list as Tier 2. (See Table 2 below.) a list of countries whose governments do not fully comply and are not making significant efforts to become compliant; TIP Reports describe this list as Tier 3. (See Table 3 below.) In accordance with the 2003 amendments to the TVPA, which required the creation of a new "special watch list," the 2004 TIP Report introduced a new category of country ranking, called the Tier 2 Watch List. For further discussion, see section on " Reporting Requirements Related to the Special Watch List ." In addition to the required country lists, the TVPA requires the State Department to include other information in the annual TIP Report. This includes information on what the United Nations, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and other multilateral organizations, as appropriate, are doing to prevent their employees, contractors, and peacekeeping forces from engaging in human trafficking or exploiting victims of trafficking; information on changes in the global patterns of human trafficking, including prevalence data, disaggregated by source, transit, and destination countries, as well as nationality, gender, and age; information on emerging human trafficking issues; and information on "promising practices in the eradication of trafficking in persons." Congress enacted the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 (CSPA) as part of its 2008 reauthorization of the TVPA. A key element of the CSPA is the requirement to include in the annual TIP Report an additional list of foreign governments that recruit and use child soldiers in their armed forces or in government-supported armed groups. Government-supported armed groups include paramilitaries, militias, and civil defense forces. The 2017 TIP Report identified eight countries on the CSPA list: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Apart from the TIP Report, the TVPA, as amended, requires the Secretary of State to submit to appropriate congressional committees a special watch list composed of countries determined by the Secretary of State to require special scrutiny during the following year. This requirement to develop a special watch list was first enacted in the TVPA reauthorization of 2003. The TVPA mandates that this list be composed of three types of countries: (1) countries upgraded in most recent TIP Report and now assessed to be fully compliant with the minimum standards (from Tier 2 to Tier 1); (2) countries upgraded in the most recent TIP Report and now assessed to be making significant efforts toward compliance with the minimum standards (from Tier 3 to Tier 2); and (3) a subset of Tier 2 countries in which the absolute number of victims is very significant or significantly increasing; there is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons, compared to the previous year; or the determination that significant efforts are being made to become compliant is based on government commitments to take additional future steps over the next year. Although the TVPA, as amended, authorizes the special watch list to be submitted separately from the TIP Report, the State Department introduced it as a feature in the 2004 TIP Report. Beginning with the 2004 TIP Report, the department included a fourth list of countries in its annual TIP Report, called the Tier 2 Watch List. This Tier 2 Watch List is composed of the special watch list countries whose governments would otherwise be listed on Tier 2, except that the absolute number of victims is large or growing, or antitrafficking efforts appear to have stalled or have yet to be implemented. (See Table 4 below.) Due on February 1 each year, the TVPA, as amended, requires the Secretary of State to submit to appropriate congressional committees an interim assessment of the progress made by each special watch list country since the last TIP Report. These mid-year assessments are typically brief, stating both positive and negative developments in each special watch list country. Readers are unable to predict, based solely on these reports, whether a country's ranking will improve, remain the same, or decline in the next TIP Report. The TVPA, as amended, requires that a country on the special watch list (in practice, the Tier 2 Watch List) for two consecutive years be subsequently listed among those whose governments do not fully comply and are not making significant efforts to become compliant (Tier 3). The requirement to limit the length of time a country may remain on the watch list was enacted in the TVPA reauthorization of 2008. The first year in which it came into effect was 2009 and the first year in which a Tier 2 Watch List country was downgraded for its duration in this tier category was 2013.