Upcoming CPAC Meeting of Biden Holdovers Should Be Postponed

On December 4, 2024, the State Department Cultural Heritage Center provided advance notice of a Cultural Property Advisory (CPAC) meeting to address a new cultural property memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and renewals of current agreements with Chile, Italy and Morocco.

Coin collectors and the trade are concerned that this CPAC hearing is being rushed through to avoid Trump Administration scrutiny of  a likely effort to place new import restrictions on widely collected Roman Imperial coins on behalf of Italy.  Others have expressed concern that  any agreement with Communist Vietnam would impact the ability of refugees to import their own cultural heritage. Based on a review of posted comments, none of these MOUs or renewals would seem to have much public support.

There is no good reason why the CPAC meeting needs to be conducted now.  The current MOUs with Italy and Morocco do not expire until 2026 and the current agreement with Chile does not expire until September 2025.  There is no “emergency” impacting Vietnamese cultural goods requiring prompt action.

All CPAC members are holdover Biden political appointees, some of whom are openly hostile to collecting.  State Department Cultural Heritage Center staff are associated in one way or the other with archaeological advocacy groups that offer unqualified support for MOUs being used to “claw back” virtually all cultural goods so they can be repatriated to their countries of origin.  These archaeological advocacy groups have also received substantial State Department funding to help create and justify these cultural property MOUs.  

As of today, the current February 4, 2025 CPAC hearing is set to go forward even though the last time an important Cultural Property MOU with China was being considered, the State Department postponed that hearing so that any Trump I holdovers could be replaced by Biden appointees (who would be more likely to bless this controversial agreement). 

Moreover, the hearing is taking place despite the existence of President Trump’s “regulatory freeze.”

Under the circumstances, if this meeting is not postponed, it could be viewed as a bureaucratic effort to undermine Trump executive authority in order to push through new import restrictions despite the vast number of comments received on the issue.