Book Description

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed: (1) the interagency process used to prepare the 1988 report on offsets in military exports; (2) the use of economic models to measure the impact of offsets; and (3) information on proposed amendments to the Defense Production Act. GAO found that: (1) agencies used an informal process to prepare the 1988 offsets report because they had no guidelines or written procedures; (2) the report summarized new data on prime contractors, but did not include any analysis of that data; (3) the report basically restated the findings of three prior reports to Congress and reproduced previous analyses based on case studies related to industrial competitiveness, employment, and international trade; (4) the methodology used to prepare the report did not identify the effect of offsets on specific critical industries; (5) differing agency views may have significantly affected the 1988 and previous reports' conclusions; and (6) proposed legislative amendments would better provide for the inclusion of differing views in the annual offsets report.