Specialty CROP Act of 2026
Summary
What This Bill Does
The Specialty CROP Act requires the Agriculture Secretary, in consultation with the United States Trade Representative, to submit an annual report to congressional agriculture and trade committees. The report must identify and analyze foreign barriers affecting U.S. specialty crops, including tariffs, quotas, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers, licensing requirements, subsidies, and other nontariff barriers.
For each relevant country, the report must estimate how the barriers affect U.S. competitiveness and, when feasible, estimate the value of exports that would have occurred without them. It must assess whether trade agreements cover each barrier and describe executive actions taken or considered, including section 301 tools, bilateral or free-trade-agreement sanitary mechanisms, and World Trade Organization processes.
The report must identify unobligated funds available for addressing specialty-crop trade barriers and explain why those funds remain unobligated. USDA and USTR must consider public comments and advice from the Agricultural Technical Advisory Committee for Trade in Fruits and Vegetables. The report is unclassified, may include a classified annex, and its unclassified portion must be public in a searchable, machine-readable format.
The bill creates analysis, transparency, and oversight duties. It does not require the President or USTR to impose a tariff, initiate a section 301 action, win a dispute, remove a foreign barrier, spend the identified funds, compensate exporters, or require growers to submit reports.
Who Benefits and How
Specialty-crop growers, exporters, trade associations, state agriculture agencies, and trade lawyers gain a recurring country-specific record of market barriers and available remedies. Congress, researchers, and the public gain machine-readable information. Agricultural trade officials gain a structured basis for prioritizing action.
Who Bears the Burden and How
USDA and USTR must collect foreign-market information, estimate counterfactual exports, review public comments, coordinate classified material, and publish annual reports. Foreign governments and subsidized competitors may face scrutiny and diplomatic pressure. The report can raise expectations among growers even though it guarantees no enforcement action or market access.
Key Provisions
- Requires an annual specialty-crop trade-barrier report.
- Identifies tariffs, quotas, and nontariff barriers.
- Includes sanitary and technical trade measures.
- Estimates competitiveness effects by country.
- Estimates lost export value when feasible.
- Assesses coverage under trade agreements.
- Describes section 301 and dispute-settlement options.
- Discloses relevant unobligated funds.
- Requires consideration of public and advisory comments.
- Publishes unclassified material in machine-readable form.
- Authorizes an optional classified annex.
- Creates no mandatory trade remedy or exporter report.
Evidence Chain:
This summary is generated from the full bill text using AI analysis. Expand "Detailed Analysis" below for identified beneficiaries/burden bearers with clause-level evidence links.
At a Glance
What This Bill Does
Requires the Agriculture Secretary, in consultation with the U.S. Trade Representative, to issue an annual public report identifying foreign trade barriers affecting specialty crops, estimating their competitive and export-value effects, assessing trade-agreement coverage, and describing available executive responses and unobligated funds.
Key Policy Areas
Specialty Crop Trade, Foreign Trade Barriers, Agricultural Exports, USDA Reporting, Trade Enforcement
Primary Purpose
Requires the Agriculture Secretary, in consultation with the U.S. Trade Representative, to issue an annual public report identifying foreign trade barriers affecting specialty crops, estimating their competitive and export-value effects, assessing trade-agreement coverage, and describing available executive responses and unobligated funds.
Policy Domains
Section 2 annual foreign-barrier analysis, executive-action inventory, comments, and publication
Identified Gains
- United States specialty-crop growers
- Specialty-crop exporters
- Agricultural trade associations
- State agriculture agencies
- Trade lawyers advising exporters
- Congressional agriculture committees
- Agricultural trade researchers
- Public commenters on trade barriers
Identified Costs
- USDA trade-analysis staff
- USTR agricultural-trade staff
- Federal economists estimating lost exports
- Agencies reviewing classified annex material
- Foreign governments identified in reports
- Foreign producers benefiting from trade barriers
- Advisory committee members reviewing barriers
Sponsors
Legislative Progress
In CommitteeReferred to the House Committee on Agriculture.
Introduced in House
Ms. Bonamici (for herself, Mr. Valadao, Mr. Costa, and Ms. …
Stakeholder Effects
cui bono?How this legislation distributes effects. Mention counts reflect frequency, not effect magnitude.
Agencies reviewing classified annex material, Congressional agriculture committees, Federal economists estimating lost exports
Positive-direction: Congressional agriculture committees
Negative-direction: Agencies reviewing classified annex material, Federal economists estimating lost exports, Foreign governments identified in reports, USDA trade-analysis staff, USTR agricultural-trade staff
Advisory committee members reviewing barriers, Agricultural trade associations, Foreign producers benefiting from trade barriers
Positive-direction: Agricultural trade associations, Specialty-crop exporters, United States specialty-crop growers
Negative-direction: Foreign producers benefiting from trade barriers
Bill Structure & Actor Mappings
Who is "The Secretary" in each section?
- "grower"
- → U.S. specialty-crop producer affected by foreign barriers
- "exporter"
- → Business selling U.S. specialty crops abroad
- "commenter"
- → Public or advisory-committee participant supplying views
- "secretary"
- → Agriculture Secretary preparing the annual report
- "trade_official"
- → U.S. Trade Representative official consulted on barriers
Note: {'scope_ids': ['specialty_crop_trade_barrier_report'], 'description': 'The bill requires analysis and disclosure but no tariff, section 301 investigation, dispute filing, fund obligation, compensation, foreign-market concession, or private reporting duty; lost-export estimates are required only when feasible.'}
Key Definitions
Terms defined in this bill
The searchable public portion of the annual report, separate from any optional classified annex.
A foreign tariff, quota, sanitary measure, technical rule, licensing condition, subsidy, or other nontariff measure affecting U.S. specialty crops.
A feasible country-level estimate of U.S. specialty-crop exports that would have occurred without the identified barriers.
We use a combination of our own taxonomy and classification in addition to large language models to assess meaning and potential beneficiaries. High confidence means strong textual evidence. Always verify with the original bill text.
Learn more about our methodology