Promotes Benefits for Small Business

Gearing up for World Trade Month in May, the U.S. Chamber sponsored activities to generate support for new trade agreements and to educate small businesses on how they would benefit.

To maximize this annual celebration of international commerce, the U.S. Chamber worked with scores of chambers across the country to help organize more than 200 events highlighting the benefits of trade in their communities. It worked with local partners to place op-eds and sent staff across the country to speak at various engagements.

The Chamber also promoted a number of U.S. bilateral free trade agreements that have been negotiated by the administration but have yet to receive congressional approval, including deals with Peru, Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. These trade deals would level the playing field currently tilted to America's disadvantage.

While the average U.S. import tariff is less than 2%, Korea, Peru, Colombia, and other countries slap tariffs averaging 10% to 12% on U.S. goods. The negotiated trade agreements with these countries would eliminate tariffs on most U.S. goods immediately and phase out remaining tariffs over a period of years.

"These agreements would be of great benefit to all U.S. companies, but especially to small and medium-size businesses," says Dan Christman, Chamber senior vice president, International Affairs. "These businesses make up 97% of U.S. exporters, and their annual export sales have doubled since 1992, topping $200 billion in recent years."

In addition to its work to secure new trade agreements, the Chamber is engaged in a massive lobbying, grassroots, communications, and public education effort to build support for extending presidential Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), which expires July 1, 2007. TPA allows Congress to set objectives that the administration must achieve in each trade negotiation. Once the president's negotiators reach an agreement with a foreign government, Congress must approve or reject it in an up-or-down vote but cannot amend it. TPA is essential to advancing the U.S. trade agenda because it instills confidence and trust in U.S. trading partners.

The Chamber is also calling on U.S. and other world leaders to resuscitate stalled global trade negotiations, known as the World Trade Organization's (WTO's) Doha Round. WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy visited the Chamber in late April, warning the business audience that the hour is growing late and that the United States must rally the participating countries to prevent the talks from collapsing entirely.

Besides building support for specific trade deals, the Chamber, through its TradeRoots program, educates small businesses on the overall benefits of trade and provides them with tools and resources to help penetrate overseas markets. At America's Small Business Summit, hosted by the U.S. Chamber, attendees participated in a TradeRoots program specifically geared to helping them develop tools for entering the global market.

Businesses can access free information about the importance of trade through a number of Chamber publications including Global Engagement: How Americans Can Win and Prosper  in the Worldwide Economy and TradeRoots' Impact of Trade, which details the economic impact of trade for each of the 50 states. These publications can be found at www.trademonth.com/.