Market Prospects for Groundnut in West Africa COMMON FUND ...

to receive special duty-free status as imports from selected African countries
(including the four of concern here) under the current Africa Growth and
Opportunities Act (AGOA) is not very clear.
Several published sources indicate (and lament) that both raw
groundnuts and peanut butter are excluded as duty-free imports under
AGOA. However, the US Trade Commission 2003 Tariff Database indicates
that a number of commodity classes (under the US Harmonized Tariff
Schedule) of both in-shell and shelled groundnut – raw, blanched or otherwise
treated – are indeed eligible for duty-free import under AGOA, as is crude
and refined groundnut oil (though peanut butter is specifically excluded).
However, according to US Trade Commission statistics, very few African
countries have yet taken advantage of the apparent duty-free status for
groundnut granted under AGOA – including South Africa, Gambia and
Guinea – and the volume of groundnut imported from these countries since
AGOA began in 2000 remains quite negligible. South Africa has also exported
a modest volume of peanut butter to the US since 2000, though this is
excluded for duty-free importation to the US under AGOA.
From these recent statistics, prospects for West African groundnut
exports to the US under AGOA does not seem particularly promising per se,
but further enquiry will be conducted, and clarification sought, directly from
US AGOA trade officials in the course of the remainder of this study.
A brief history of regulation
As noted above, the history of US government intervention in the groundnut
sector dates back to the Agricultural Adjustment Acts of 1933 and 1938,
Section 22 of which put in place what was to become the Peanut Program of
the USDA. Groundnut imports were initially one of a number of basic
commodities to be proscribed by a set of restrictive quotas and tariffs, but
those for groundnut have proven far more enduring (and involved) than those
for any other commodity.
In 1953, during a decline in commodity prices linked to the US-Korean
War, additional trade restrictions on groundnut were initiated under Section
22 of the 1933 Act, but were contested under the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT). From 1956, in response to the GATT action,
import quotas for groundnut were determined on an annual basis, and slowly
grew in response to increasing domestic requirements, as well as successive
international trade agreements.
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