Merchandise Export in the United States

Merchandise Export in the International Business Landscape

Definition of Merchandise Export in the context of U.S. international business and public trade policy: Sale of a good to a resident of a foreign country.

Federal Government Efforts

The National Export Initiative (NEI), which shows that the President’s goal of doubling exports and supporting several million new jobs over five years is on track, and that exports in the first four months of 2010 grew almost 17 percent from the same period last year.

Since the President called for the National Export Initiative in his State of the Union Address, significant progress has been made on each of its five main objectives:

• Improved advocacy efforts on behalf of U.S. exporters: The Department of Commerce has coordinated 18 trade missions with over 160 companies participating in 24 countries until July 2010.
• Increased access to export financing: Ex-Im has more than doubled its loans in 2010 to support American exporters from the same period in 2009, helping to support nearly 110,000 jobs.
• Reinforced efforts to remove barriers to trade: In March 2010, the United States reached an agreement with China to reopen the Chinese market to U.S. pork and pork products. In June 2010, the United States agreed with Russia to reopen the Russian market to U.S. poultry exports. These steps are worth more than $1 billion.
• Enforcement of trade rules: In the middle of 2010, the WTO ruled that European governments subsidized Airbus’s large civil aircraft. This ruling is expected to sustain and even restore jobs to American aerospace workers by leveling the playing field for the U.S. aerospace industry.
• International promotion of policies leading to strong, sustainable and balanced economic growth: The period January 2009 to June 2010 have been the most effective period of international economic cooperation in generations with global growth replacing economic contraction.