Title 19, Customs DutiesRelease 119-110

§3731 Sense of the Congress Regarding Comprehensive Debt Relief for the World’s Poorest Countries

Title 19 › CHAPTER 23 — EXTENSION OF CERTAIN TRADE BENEFITS TO SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA › SUBCHAPTER III — ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT RELATED ISSUES › § 3731

Last updated Sep 22, 2026|Official source

Summary

Congress urges the United States to act quickly with other countries to give broad debt relief to the world’s poorest nations so they can grow their economies and reduce poverty. It says past efforts like rescheduling loans and small debt cuts did not stop debts from growing. In 1997 the Group of Seven, the World Bank, and the IMF started the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, and that effort is being revised to fix rules about conditions, how much debt is forgiven, and how the savings are used to help poor people. Debt relief should help the private sector, increase trade and investment, support free markets, and promote wide economic growth. It should also back policies that fight poverty and share benefits broadly, such as improving education, health, AIDS programs, clean water, and the environment. Deals must be open and involve citizens and country circumstances. No country should get relief if it fails to cooperate with the U.S. on terrorism or narcotics, seriously violates human rights, is at war, or spends too much on its military. The IMF must use its own resources to help eligible countries without selling gold into the open market or harming the gold price.

Full Legal Text

Title 19, §3731

Customs Duties, Source: USLM XML via OLRC

(a)Findings

Congress makes the following findings:

(1)The burden of external debt has become a major impediment to economic growth and poverty reduction in many of the world’s poorest countries.

(2)Until recently, the United States Government and other official creditors sought to address this problem by rescheduling loans and in some cases providing limited debt reduction.

(3)Despite such efforts, the cumulative debt of many of the world’s poorest countries continued to grow beyond their capacity to repay.

(4)In 1997, the Group of Seven, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund adopted the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC), a commitment by the international community that all multilateral and bilateral creditors, acting in a coordinated and concerted fashion, would reduce poor country debt to a sustainable level.

(5)The HIPC Initiative is currently undergoing reforms to address concerns raised about country conditionality, the amount of debt forgiven, and the allocation of savings realized through the debt forgiveness program to ensure that the Initiative accomplishes the goals of economic growth and poverty alleviation in the world’s poorest countries.

(b)Sense of the Congress

It is the sense of the Congress that—

(1)Congress and the President should work together, without undue delay and in concert with the international community, to make comprehensive debt relief available to the world’s poorest countries in a manner that promotes economic growth and poverty alleviation;

(2)this program of bilateral and multilateral debt relief should be designed to strengthen and expand the private sector, encourage increased trade and investment, support the development of free markets, and promote broad-scale economic growth in beneficiary countries;

(3)this program of debt relief should also support the adoption of policies to alleviate poverty and to ensure that benefits are shared widely among the population, such as through initiatives to advance education, improve health, combat AIDS, and promote clean water and environmental protection;

(4)these debt relief agreements should be designed and implemented in a transparent manner and with the broad participation of the citizenry of the debtor country and should ensure that country circumstances are adequately taken into account;

(5)no country should receive the benefits of debt relief if that country does not cooperate with the United States on terrorism or narcotics enforcement, is a gross violator of the human rights of its citizens, or is engaged in conflict or spends excessively on its military; and

(6)in order to prevent adverse impact on a key industry in many developing countries, the International Monetary Fund must mobilize its own resources for providing debt relief to eligible countries without allowing gold to reach the open market, or otherwise adversely affecting the market price of gold.

Reference

Citations & Metadata

Citation

19 U.S.C. § 3731

Title 19, Customs Duties

Last Updated

Sep 22, 2026

Release point: 119-110