President Obama signed an executive order this morning establishing an Interagency Task Force on Commercial Advocacy.
Obama said he took the action “in order to help level the playing field on behalf of U.S. businesses and workers competing for international contracts against foreign firms and to facilitate.”
The order builds off a 2010 executive order creating the National Export Initiative. “The creation of a new whole-of-government commercial advocacy task force that will provide enhanced Federal support for U.S. businesses competing for international contracts, coordinate the efforts of executive branch leadership in engaging their foreign counterparts on commercial advocacy issues, and increase the availability of information to the U.S. business community about these kinds of export opportunities, will ensure that U.S. exporters have more support for selling their goods and services in global markets,” it states.
The task force will be led by the Commerce secretary and include senior officials from State, Defense, Treasury, Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and other agencies.
It’s tasked with reviewing and prioritizing commercial advocacy cases “to enhance Federal support for such cases, in order to increase the success of U.S. exporters competing for foreign procurements” and coordinating engagement with foreign counterparts.
It will also “institute processes to obtain and distribute information about foreign procurement opportunities that may be of interest to U.S. businesses in order to expand awareness of opportunities for U.S. businesses to sell their goods and services to foreign governments.”
And, naturally, the order demands regular progress reports.
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