Congressional leadership on Tuesday released the details of a bipartisan spending bill, known as a “continuing resolution,” that will allow the government to avoid a shutdown if passed by the House and Senate before funding runs out this weekend.
That “if” looms large, however; President-elect Donald Trump has already voiced his displeasure with the package, and Republican lawmakers are rallying behind him to take down the bill and start from scratch. Never absent from the conversation, he took to Truth Social Wednesday evening to declare that the bill is “dying fast.”
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The proposal, which contains $100 billion in disaster relief funding for and about $10 billion in aid for farmers, would float the government’s activities through March 14, nearly two months into Trump’s second term.
Among the allocations laid out in the plan—which was slated to go to a vote in both chambers of Congress on Friday—is an extension of special trade rules for Haiti under the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (CBERA), including the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement (HOPE) and the Haiti Economic Lift Program (HELP) Acts.
These trade preference programs, currently set to expire on Sept. 25, 2025, give imports of apparel, textiles, and certain other goods from Haiti duty-free access to the U.S. market.
Over the years, CBERA has been amended to further incentivize apparel and textile sourcing from Haiti. Additional preferential benefits, like allowing the country to use yarns and fabrics from countries other than the U.S., the introduction of a quota program and the expansion of the number of eligible apparel products from Haiti, have helped the country bolster its export business. If the government spending package is signed into law this week, these measures will remain in place until Sept. 30, 2030.
“We urge Congress to pass this measure, not only because it keeps the government funded past Friday’s deadline but also because it includes a crucial five-year renewal of the Haiti HOPE-HELP program, which allows duty-free access for certain apparel and textile products from Haiti to the U.S. market,” said Steve Lamar, president of the American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA) on Wednesday.
“This renewal is urgently needed to help combat the crisis that continues to unfold in our island neighbor by anchoring much needed textile and apparel jobs, which in turn support U.S. jobs, in the region at a crucial time,” he added.
In Lamar’s estimation, abandoning the Haiti HOPE-HELP programs next year would imperil a much-needed driver of the country’s economy. Political instability and gang violence have plagued Haiti for years, deepening in the days following the assassination of former President Jovenel Moise in 2021. The unrest has disrupted the Caribbean nation’s burgeoning apparel sector and its logistics infrastructure, slowing the growth of its once promising industrial growth and export market.
While help for Haiti is now finally on the table, the AAFA lead took issue with the fact that other expiring or lapsed trade preference programs haven’t been treated with the same consideration.
“We are deeply disappointed that this measure doesn’t include the much-needed long-term renewal of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and the long overdue retroactive renewal Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), which has now been expired for nearly four years,” he said. “Congress must prioritize passage of these vital programs to support a return to a predictable and investment-based trade policy.”
AGOA, which also expires in September 2025, covers an array of imports from some three dozen African nations. Just as Africa’s apparel and textile sector begins to flourish in earnest, with more American brands sourcing from an increasingly verticalized network of apparel and textile suppliers, the looming expiration of the program stands to bring that investment to a halt.
Meanwhile, one of the country’s oldest trade programs—GSP—lapsed on Dec. 31, 2020, with no hint of a renewal in sight. Passed by Congress in 1974 and renewed 14 times since, the program facilitated duty-free access for certain products imported from developing countries across the globe. Since GSP lapsed, imports from eligible trade partners have been subjected to regular duty rates, driving down incentives for brands to diversify their sourcing.
But trade issues like these appear to be far from the minds of Capitol Hill lawmakers this week as they scramble to beat their impending deadline.
While the federal funding bill was drafted with bipartisan support, a growing wave of Republican members of Congress now say they take issue with the bill’s broadness. Hours after its announcement, conservative lawmakers lambasted House Speaker Mike Johnson for overcomplicating what was meant to be a stopgap measure.
“It’s not a [continuing resolution], which is a continuation of the budget. It’s turning into an omnibus,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) told reporters.
“If Republicans try to pass a clean Continuing Resolution without all of the Democrat ‘bells and whistles’ that will be so destructive to our Country, all it will do, after January 20th, is bring the mess of the Debt Limit into the Trump Administration, rather than allowing it to take place in the Biden Administration,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday evening. “Any Republican that would be so stupid as to do this should, and will, be Primaried. Everything should be done, and fully negotiated, prior to my taking Office on January 20th, 2025.”
