Tradeology, the ITA Blog

Tipten Troidl has been working with the International Trade Administration for thirteen years. Currently, she is serving as the Acting Director for the Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs.

Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy and we need them exporting in order to reach the President’s National Export Initiative (NEI) of doubling exports by the end of 2014.

On Monday, Joseph Hanley, the Regional Director for the U.S and Foreign Commercial Service testified in Pittsburgh [before the House Small Business Committee] on the “Impact of U.S. Trade Policies on Small Businesses and Manufacturing.”  Joe represented the International Trade Administration before the House Small Business Committee’s Chairman Tipton (CO) and Ranking Member Critz (PA). 

Hanley noted that ITA’s main objectives are to expand U.S. exports and to create jobs.  The Commercial Service has 108 domestic offices around the country with three in Pennsylvania.  The Pennsylvania U.S. Export Assistance Centers have provided 4,000 individual trade counseling sessions to over 1,000  Pennsylvania business in the past 1 ½ years.  We are pleased to announce that because of these services 257 Pennsylvania companies have reported 688 export successes valued at more than $500 million to 91 different countries. More importantly, 62% of these companies have fewer than 100 employees.

Pennsylvania has a plethora of success stories. 

Hanley told the Congressmen about RPM industries, a small business that manufactures pre-lubrication and fluid evacuation for diesel and gasoline engines. His team helped RPM Industries expand its export development strategy by having RPM participate in an overseas trade mission event, Trade Winds, to Brazil.  Hanley happily reported that RPM Industries expects to have sold almost $1 million of its products to Brazil by the end of this year.  

Joe also touched on other services that ITA provides to small businesses. ITA’s Petition Counseling and Analysis Unit  provides antidumping/countervailing duty counseling. Their objective is to help U.S businesses understand U.S unfair trade laws in relation to dumping and foreign government subsidies. The work of this office not only levels the playing field for small U.S businesses but helps companies with the process of filing a petition for an investigation.

If you are a small or medium size business and you are interested in giving exporting a try, please reach out to any one of our U.S. Export Assistance Centers because someone like Joe is waiting to help you.