Allied Defense Sales Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BERA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of a bill I co-led with Representative Zinke regarding the promotion of multicountry defense article purchases, which can result in lower prices, greater efficiencies, and interoperability for our allies and partners.

While most foreign defense sales are conducted by individual countries as purchasers, multicountry purchases can provide more competitive pricing, coordination, and other benefits, including for smaller countries that are less frequent purchasers, as well as multinational alliances.

This bill directs the Secretary of State to develop and implement a strategy to encourage U.S. foreign partners to participate in the foreign military sales, FMS, and direct commercial sales, DCS, processes on a multinational basis.

The bill also includes reporting requirements providing Congress with details on this strategy and its implementation. While multinational purchases are not currently prohibited by statute, this bill requires a strategy for socializing, promoting, and making available said options for multinational cases to purchasing countries and an accompanying report to Congress.

This will be beneficial to both the U.S. and our partners and allies and provides helpful additional information to Congress as we conduct necessary oversight over this initiative. Therefore, I am pleased to support it, and I encourage my colleagues to do so, as well.

Mr. Speaker, this bill will promote multicountry defense article purchases that will, in practice, lower prices, boost interoperability, and provide other benefits. It will help streamline these purchases, including for multinational alliances and smaller countries. I support this bill and encourage my colleagues to do the same.

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