THE U.S. INTERNATIONAL TRADE ADMINISTRATION: WHAT IT DOES AND HOW DOES IT DO IT?

Established in 1980 to reflect the increased attention on trade policy and promotion, the U.S. International Trade Administration’s (ITA) mission is to create prosperity by strengthening the competitiveness of U.S. industry, promoting trade and investment, and ensuring fair trade and compliance with trade laws and agreements. ITA has a dedicated workforce of almost 2,400 people in the United States and abroad to accomplish this mission. These ITA employees serve their customers and stakeholders through five program units: 

1. Trade Promotion and the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service (Commercial Service)

The Commercial Service’s mission is to promote U.S. exports, particularly by small and medium-sized businesses, and to protect U.S. business interests abroad. The Commercial Service’s Commercial Officers and locally engaged staff located in priority markets worldwide, along with trade specialists across the United States help U.S. firms become more globally competitive and expand their exports. The Commercial Service focuses on growing exports to spur economic growth and positively impact domestic job creation. The Commercial Service, with its network of trade specialists in 108 offices in 48 states, and commercial experts in more than 75 countries around the world plays a pivotal role in helping U.S. firms become more globally competitive, in breaking down the barriers to trade, and in facilitating the expansion of exports by U.S. firms.

2. Market Access and Compliance (MAC)

MAC’s mission is to advance U.S. commercial interests and support the National Export Initiative (NEI) by working to: Create a favorable business climate in foreign markets; Eliminate trade barriers; and Defend U.S. trade agreements. MAC executes this mission both by developing specific country engagement strategies that are tailored to the unique and distinctive needs of and conditions in each country or region, as well as by pursuing and overseeing a range of cross-cutting policy initiatives to preempt or address market access challenges that are either transnational in nature or that are common to many or most countries (i.e., anticorruption, intellectual property enforcement, and standards/regulatory cooperation).

3. Manufacturing and Services (MAS)

MAS’ mission is to advance the international competitiveness of U.S. industries by leveraging its in-depth sector and analytical expertise in the development and execution of trade policy and promotion strategies to increase exports. MAS promotes export competitiveness of U.S. industry, working hand-in-hand with the private sector; federal, state, and local governments; and international organizations. MAS industry experts and economists perform strategic research and analysis in order to develop sector specific strategies for increasing U.S. exports, shaping and implementing trade policy, and supporting President Obama’s goal of doubling U.S. exports and increasing domestic employment. MAS administers programs to encourage small- and medium-sized exporters to pursue access to global markets, such as the Market Development Cooperator Program (MDCP) and Export Trading Company Program. MAS works closely with the private sector to address standards and certification issues that limit U.S. exports. MAS works collaboratively within the Department of Commerce (DOC) and across the Federal government to identify key U.S. Government players in high potential export sectors and to facilitate comprehensive export expansion strategies in these sectors. MAS serves as the primary federal liaison between industry and the U.S. Government on industry-specific trade issues.

4. Import Administration (IA)

IA’s mission is to take prompt and aggressive action against unfair foreign trade practices by enforcing the U.S. trade laws and trade agreements negotiated to address trade-distorting practices. The Antidumping (AD) and Countervailing Duty (CVD) Operations unit enhances uniformity and consistency in the application of the U.S. trade laws. It conducts AD and CVD investigations, administrative reviews, new shipper reviews, sunset reviews, changed circumstances reviews, and scope and anti-circumvention inquiries within statutory and/or regulatory time limits. The unit also works closely with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and other agencies to identify and counter evasion of AD and CVD duties.

The Textiles and Apparel Office administers and enforces agreements and preference programs concerning textile, apparel, footwear and travel goods industries and works to ensure fair trade and a level playing field for these industries to enhance their competitiveness in international markets. Additionally, the Office has an active export promotion program that assists small- and medium-sized U.S. textile and apparel firms develop and expand their export markets helping job retention and creation in this and related sectors.

The Foreign Trade Zones (FTZ) Program Office serves as the operational arm of the FTZ Board, an interagency body chaired by the Secretary of Commerce, and helps to encourage activity and value-added at U.S. facilities in competition with foreign alternatives by allowing delayed or reduced duty payments on foreign merchandise, as well as other savings.

5. Executive Direction and Administration

The Executive Direction and Administration (ExAd) unit’s mission is to achieve U.S. trade expansion and economic growth through executive leadership; well-conceived policy guidance; and efficient and effective management of ITA resources.

The ExAd is organized into the following three main units that support the management and corporate services:

• Executive Direction includes the Office of the Under Secretary (OUS), Office of the Deputy Under Secretary (ODUS), Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs (OLIA), and the Office of Public Affairs (OPA). This unit plans, determines, and coordinates policy; directs programmatic activities; and is responsible for all administrative processes of ITA.

• The Chief Financial Officer and Director of Administration oversees the agency’s budget, financial requirements and human capital resources; manages operational programs; and measures program performance to ensure ITA’s success in achieving its strategic goals.

• OCIO provides centralized strategic and operational management of information technology (IT) resources; maximizes information control and IT security on a global basis; and oversees platform standardization, training and life cycle management.

ITA Best Practice

ITA’s customers and stakeholders range from large multinationals, to small-to-medium sized companies and include the White House, other U.S. Government agencies, regulators, and Congress. These companies face a spectrum of hurdles in the global marketplace, including the lack of readily available information about exporting and foreign market opportunities, strong competition from foreign companies and governments, and difficult market conditions abroad. ITA works with trade multiplier organizations, such as trade associations and chambers of commerce, who represent a broad range of U.S. industry interests; as well as with foreign companies that are interested in purchasing U.S. goods and services and investing in the United States. In addition to other federal government agencies, ITA also works closely with state and local government economic development partners that have a role to play in ITA’s ability to deliver services effectively and efficiently to its customers.

ITA has a set of core strengths that set the organization apart from other federal agencies, and position it optimally to execute its mission. The combination of its sector-economic-country expertise and export promotion-enforcement-compliance-policy expertise enable ITA to analyze U.S. industries’ trade issues and needs holistically, make recommendations, and take actions. ITA’s global footprint of commercial and trade experts puts ITA closer to the clients it serves to help them succeed globally. This unique organizational infrastructure is not only invaluable to the U.S. exporter, but is also regularly called upon by other federal, state, and local government agencies to provide the necessary support for their international programs.

Strategic Goal 1: Advance U.S. Commercial and Strategic Interests in International Markets

To capitalize on opportunities in high-growth sectors and markets, ITA has undertaken a strategic repositioning of its global footprint. The repositioning has shifted staff and program resources from low priority to higher priority markets and sectors, taking into consideration the export potential and growth opportunity for U.S. companies, particularly SMEs. While global trade continues to expand commercial opportunities for U.S. firms, economic integration and its benefits do not come without challenges. With greater interdependencies in global supply chains and the rise of cross-border issues, the global trading system and the international agreements that govern it have become more complex. Recognizing these complexities, a key part to ITA’s strategy is the negotiation, implementation, and enforcement of market-opening trade and/or investment agreements, including those in the WTO, Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), and Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs), which are crucial vehicles for enabling America to compete freely and fairly in overseas markets.

Ensuring appropriate industry and stakeholder input in trade negotiations and policy development is another pillar that supports sound policy choices. ITA continues to actively support trade negotiations by providing sector-specific analyses for American negotiators to ensure that the U.S. negotiating objectives address the real needs of U.S. industries competing for the global market. Through industry advisory committees, ITA coordinates public-private sector committees that represent most sectors of the U.S. economy and provide input to trade policy negotiations and economic domestic policies that impact U.S. global competitiveness. These groups serve as communication channels for U.S. companies to express their views to U.S. negotiators on trade discussions and other policy issues. Recognizing that small and medium sized firms represent an especially robust growth sector, and that metropolitan areas play an important role in supporting U.S. export growth, the advisory committee structure is designed to ensure diversity of firm size, sector, ownership and geographic location.

As the United States competes with countries that have aggressive national programs to encourage businesses to move to or expand within their borders, ITA leads a federal government effort to promote and support foreign direct investment into the United States. This effort complements individual U.S. states’ efforts to promote investment. ITA supports prospective and current foreign investors as they seek information, counseling, and ombudsman assistance about the logistical process of making an investment in the United States.

In formulating strategies and developing policies to advance the international competitiveness of U.S. business, ITA relies on a data driven approach to identifying priority sectors and markets and assessing the probable economic impact of proposed policies and promotional programs. This requires a sophisticated institutional capacity to analyze objectively global economic and trade trends, cyclical business impacts on U.S. competitiveness, and sector-specific business intelligence. ITA analytical support for policy decisions is independent and objective. ITA industry experts and economists apply innovative analytical approaches to measuring new business models (such as global supply chains, financial services export earnings, export infrastructure value added) where established data sources may be inadequate.

Strategic Goal 2: Broaden and Deepen the U.S. Exporter Base

ITA’s export promotion efforts focus on helping current exporters expand to additional markets. To do so, ITA identifies the best markets for their goods and services and increases the number of opportunities for them to meet foreign buyers and complete sales transactions. The U.S. Government must continue to find innovative ways to encourage more U.S. businesses, especially SMEs, to take advantage both of improved access to foreign markets and expanding business opportunities in a growing world economy. In order for these businesses to break into new markets, or expand their current export footprint, they need focused and tailored assistance to develop the knowledge and contacts to successfully identify and pursue international sales opportunities. ITA is also exploring ways to increase private sector participation in ITA’s export promotion and market development programs.

Furthermore, partnerships with state export resources, economic development offices, technology incubators, associations, and corporate strategic partners, such as logistics companies, banks and other similar export assistance organizations, enable ITA to leverage core strengths among the partners to accelerate international sales of infrequent exporters. Such partnerships are critical to connecting U.S. companies to public and private resources essential for increased competitiveness and profitability. ITA expands its collaboration with these partners, through education and outreach, further leveraging these networks to reach additional SMEs.

Strategic Goal 3: Identify and Resolve Unfair Trade Practices

Efforts to enhance U.S. commercial competitiveness and to maximize the potential of U.S. exporters can be thwarted by unfair and illegal practices of governments and firms abroad. U.S. firms and their workers should not have to compete against foreign public treasuries or firms that are made viable by the trade-distorting or protectionist policies of their governments. Only with a level playing field can U.S. enterprises strengthen and develop the capacity to expand into new export markets or maintain market share. As part of the interagency trade enforcement effort to neutralize such unfair barriers and advantages, ITA  taps into and expands the full range of Commerce’s legal, analytical, investigatory, trade policy and commercial expertise to provide a robust and comprehensive program of services to assist U.S. exporters and confront or head off foreign unfair trade policies, practices, barriers and protectionist measures. This includes ITA’s strong enforcement of U.S. trade remedy laws (e.g., the antidumping and countervailing duty laws), and identifying and addressing foreign subsidization and unfair pricing practices that impede the competitiveness of U.S. producers, workers and exporters domestically and abroad. ITA also intensifies efforts to identify, analyze and stop evasion and circumvention of the border measures imposed to offset dumping and subsidization.

ITA continues to closely monitor foreign government compliance with WTO trade remedy rules and advocate on behalf of U.S. exporters to ensure they receive transparent and fair treatment in such investigations.

ITA also works to improve the business climate abroad by sharing best practices, facilitating technical assistance in order to improve predictability and transparency in foreign markets, and addressing trade barriers, such as inadequate protections for intellectual property rights, arbitrary regulations and standards, and corruption. ITA utilizes a broad range of approaches, including developing and leveraging bilateral and multilateral mechanisms, as well as public-private sector dialogues.

ITA leverages a number of U.S. Government resources to help companies and works with all businesses to ensure that they receive the benefits of the more than 250 trade agreements that open up foreign markets to U.S. goods and services. ITA continues to work with its trading partners to ensure U.S. companies can take advantage of new market access opportunities as a result of the trade agreements that are negotiated.

Strategic Goal 4: Foster Excellent Relationships with Customers and Stakeholders

With advances in technology and service delivery systems in other sectors, the public’s expectations of the federal government have continued to rise. As such, ITA must also keep pace with those expectations by improving its service delivery to its customers and stakeholders. ITA is learning from what is working in the private sector and other government entities, and apply these best practices to deliver services better, faster, and at lower cost.

As part of ITA’s customer relationship management strategy, ITA continues to implement a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform to allow ITA to manage and track its interactions with clients and partners. This will allow for more streamlined reporting, metrics, and trend analysis across agencies while providing better customer service to the U.S. exporting community. The platform would also allow for data exchange between bureaus, agencies, and partners. This would also improve the referral process between ITA and public/private partners.

Recognizing that most U.S. companies now seek information over the Internet, ITA is enhancing its use of technology (e.g., websites, social media, and webinars) to deliver timely information to its customers and stakeholders. ITA will develop a significantly enhanced Export.gov as the government-wide portal for U.S. companies seeking information on exporting and international business. The enhanced Export.gov will feature robust content that will deliver a personalized experience for each user. It will foster public and private online communities with robust collaboration and social media features, enabling ITA specialists to reach a greater population of current and potential exporters. This initiative also supports the White House direction to all executive agencies to take actions that assist small businesses and exporters in gaining access to information on federal programs and services. In addition, ITA is also leveraging technology to allow our customers to file all antidumping and countervailing duty submissions electronically and provide online training resources to make the transition from paper to electronic document submissions go more seamless.

Strategic Goal 5: Achieve Organizational and Management Excellence

More than ever before, federal agencies are facing tighter fiscal pressures and are expected to do more with less. ITA has embraced this challenge by taking steps to operate more efficiently and effectively. On the human capital front, ITA is developing innovation approaches to recruitment, training, and retention of its employees while recognizing the realities of federal resource constraints. This includes a focus on leadership development, accountability, and succession planning. ITA continues to reengineer business processes to provide its employees the tools they need to do their core jobs more efficiently. For example, ITA has taken steps to implement an e-travel system that allows official travelers to make reservations, prepare travel orders, and finalize travel vouchers. Eventually, ITA seeks to integrate this system with all stakeholders, allowing for a complete electronic solution. Furthermore, ITA will also leverage technology to allow for a more mobile and flexible workforce, while ensuring that the security of its networks are safeguarded.