New Interagency Task Force to Focus on Commercial Advocacy

December 6, 2012

On December 6, 2012, President Obama issued an Executive Order providing for the establishment of an interagency task force focusing on commercial advocacy. The task force is intended to help level the playing field for U.S. businesses and workers competing for international contracts against foreign firms and to facilitate the growth of sales of U.S. goods and services globally. The task force will be chaired by the Secretary of Commerce and will include senior-level officials from the Departments of State, Defense, Treasury, Agriculture, Transportation, Energy, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services. It will also include senior-level officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Export-Import Bank of the United States, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Small Business Administration and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency.

The task force’s activities will include:

• Reviewing and prioritizing commercial advocacy cases in which the Department of Commerce has approved the provision of commercial advocacy services and coordinating the activities of relevant agencies to enhance Federal support for such cases;
• Coordinating the engagement of agency leadership with their foreign counterparts regarding commercial advocacy issues;
• Developing strategies to raise the U.S. business communities’ awareness of commercial advocacy assistance opportunities;
• Instituting processes to obtain and distribute information about foreign procurement opportunities of interest to U.S. businesses;
• Facilitating voluntary short-term personnel exchanges between the Department of Commerce and other Task Force agencies in order to cross-train personnel to better serve exporters;
• Submitting a progress report to the Export Promotion Cabinet every 180 days.

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