The Urge to Merge

In case you have not heard (which is a fancy way of saying that I am catching up on this), the President wants congressional authority to merge several key trade-related functions into a single agency. Most of these are not enforcement agencies and, therefore, do not show up in this blog space often. On the other hand, they are trade promotion agencies. The agencies under consideration for merger are:
    U.S. Department of Commerce’s core business and trade functions
    The Small Business Administration
    The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative
    The Export-Import Bank
    The Overseas Private Investment Corporation
    The U.S. Trade and Development Agency.  
Here is the White House fact sheet on the proposal. I do not know whether Commerce's "core business and trade functions" include Import Administration and, therefore, dumping and countervailing duty cases.

Comments

Anonymous said…
This seems like a great move, would be very interested to see if there is an expansion of roles or if the new agency would be tethered by the previous agency powers.
Jan 18, 2012, 11:21:00 AM
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