Photo: ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images
One of the eternal mysteries of the legislative process is why something everyone supports can still fail to be enacted. Such is the case with the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which expired on September 30.
AGOA has always had widespread support. The last time it was renewed in 2015, the Senate passed the bill 97–1. Democrats initially supported it because it assisted lower-income countries, including countries where they thought it was in the United States’ long-term foreign policy interest to maintain good relations. Republicans initially supported it because it had minimal budgetary impact and exemplified their philosophy of “trade not aid.” Over the years, that support, which was always more for the principle of the thing than for the specific details of the program, has not so much declined as it has been overtaken by other considerations, some related to the legislation and some not—AGOA has often been collateral damage.
The unrelated factor is the nature of the legislative process. In recent years, thanks largely to the increasing polarization of Congress, action on the House and Senate floors tends to focus on “must-pass” measures like appropriations, the annual defense authorization, and presidential priorities, in Trump’s case, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. So far in 2025, only 36 bills have been enacted into law, below the pace of the previous Congress, which enacted 274, which was also a historic low. (The first Congress I worked in had a total of 772.) That means that smaller bills’ best chance of enactment is to get them incorporated into larger ones. Some rules make that complicated, such as limitations on adding authorizing legislation to an appropriation, and, at least in the House, adding a measure not related to the underlying bill—a rule swallowed by its exceptions but a convenient excuse if leadership wants to keep a bill “clean” and avoid adding excess baggage.
Excess baggage is a particular problem for trade legislation. Everybody has a trade gripe, usually related to a constituent’s desire for protection, and nobody can resist the temptation to add it to a train that might be leaving the station. The result is that trade bills often collapse under their own weight. This has happened to AGOA in the past, as members wanted to add trade law reforms, trade adjustment assistance renewal, Generalized System of Preferences renewal, and other items to it, several of which were much more controversial than AGOA. The result is that the train rarely leaves the station.
AGOA has also been the victim of a dilemma—how to make it more useful to the African beneficiaries and at the same time more consistent with U.S. foreign policy priorities.
It has had a limited impact. While imports from AGOA countries peaked in 2007 at over $80 billion, they have since fallen to only $8 billion in 2024. There are anecdotes of significant impact, such as the expansion of the Lesotho apparel industry, but overall, it has been a minor factor in both the African and U.S. economies. For many years, its biggest exports were oil and other raw materials—helpful for the United States but not a big contributor to African countries that want to increase the value-added of their exports.
Only 26 of the 54 African nations are eligible for AGOA benefits, and eligibility depends on a host of factors, including progress toward a market economy, rule of law, political pluralism and the right to due process, combating corruption, protecting human rights and worker rights, implementing policies to reduce poverty and improve access to education and health care, and reducing barriers to U.S. trade and investment.
Those are all good goals, but they can be big asks for developing country governments, which often find themselves without sufficient resources or the capability to enforce the laws they pass and encounter the “iron rice bowls” of self-interest, protection, and corruption among their elites. The relatively modest benefits of AGOA do not provide much incentive to take on entrenched domestic interests. In addition, developing countries often lack the physical infrastructure necessary to enhance their exports as well as the knowledge needed to comply with U.S. regulatory requirements.
The United States, on the other hand, has tended to add to these requirements, increasing the compliance burden and political challenges for African nations, but it has not always acted consistently. The Biden administration was mostly interested in human rights and worker rights. The Trump administration seems more interested in extracting African minerals and keeping their governments out of China’s orbit, neither of which will be a significant boost to their long-term development.
The right answer for AGOA is to expand eligibility, simplify the requirements, help the program respond to Africa’s fast-growing digital sector, have a consistent review policy, and turn the annual AGOA Forum into a genuine consultation and exchange of views rather than a pro forma exercise. Unfortunately, that doesn’t check many boxes for the U.S. political left and right, who are more interested in a program that helps the United States than one that helps Africa. The administration announced its support for a one-year extension of AGOA days before it expired, a case of too little, too late, but the Biden administration also squandered its opportunities to push for renewal. Sadly, there are no heroes in this story and, so far, no happy ending.
William A. Reinsch is senior adviser and Scholl Chair emeritus with the Economics Program and Scholl Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
