The Obama Administration has plans streamline its six trade regulatory agencies under one umbrella of US international trade as a new department to be submitted to Congress by next month.
The US Department of Commerce is to take over six federal agencies: the Small Business Administration (SBA); the Office of the US Trade Representative, the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the US Trade and Development Agency.
Yet President Barack Obama announced that he would elevate the SBA into the Cabinet, a position it last held during the Clinton administration.
The US Trade Representative, which was run from the office of the president, is now to report to the secretary of the newly formed department and it will retain its cabinet-level status.
The merger is designed to reduce regulatory burdens on businesses and save money by eliminating duplicate government functions; it would cut more than 1,000 jobs and save about $3-billion over the next decade, the Washington Post reported.
The four pillars of the reorganisation will cover trade and investment, including enforcement, financing and promotion; small business and economic development; technology and innovation and statistics (including the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, as well as the Bureau of Labour Statistics).
Small business reforms is to become effective immediately with its Small Business Administration (SBA) will rise to a cabinet-level agency and a new website will launch shortly. The Business USA site is described as a “one-stop shop for small businesses and exporters.”
President Obama justifies the reorganisation as a move historically granted to US Presidents “from Herbert Hoover to Ronald Reagan”.
Both trade bodies and congressmen have opposed the change to the US Trade Representative into a larger entity. Some 80 business and agricultural groups warned the president that the Trade Representative’s “unique and important role” may suffer damage to its credibility and to its ability to “play its unique coordinating role within the US government,” said the law firm, Venable LLP.
“We emphasised that the Office of the US Trade Representative has a unique and distinctive role negotiating and enforcing US trade agreements,” said John Murphy, the Chamber of Commerce’s vice president of international affairs, reports The Hill journal. “The business community would oppose its merger with the Commerce Department, whose functions are quite different,” he added.
The US Department of Interior will subsume elements of the Commerce department not related to trade investment such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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