§4721a State Trade Coordination

Summary

The Secretary of Commerce must work with the Trade Promotion Coordinating Committee and state trade offices to make a single plan that brings state trade help into the federal trade promotion effort. The plan must say what state trade offices will do to help exporters, how they differ from federal offices, how they will be used in the federal program, how they will share information and resources, how they will coordinate trade and training events, how they will avoid overlap, and where businesses can go for trade help. That plan must be finished and sent to Congress not later than 12 months after February 24, 2016. The Secretary, through the head of the U.S. Foreign and Commercial Service, must also make an annual Federal-State export strategy for each state that sends in its own plan. The annual strategy must reflect the state’s export goals, main industries, possible trade events, and ways to be more efficient. Those annual strategies must be sent to the Trade Promotion Coordinating Committee by February 1, 2017, and by February 1 each year after. The Secretary must also create a system to share export success data and common reporting measures and report that system to Congress not later than one year after February 24, 2016.