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Commerce agency has been proven to hinder international trade and plays favorites

 


International trade is not a difficult concept to understand, especially when it comes to the fact that this helps the prosperity of the nation. That is a key area for the Department of Commerce, which is done through the International Trade Administration. The ITA, it seems, does not do the job it was created for, the exact opposite in fact. Even worse, the backlog is at ten years. On top of all of that, the agency has been proven to be playing favorites with whom they help.

Audit Findings

Here, via the Commerce OIG report, is the scale of how bad the ITA has become.

“Although past and current administrations have prioritized opening foreign markets and reducing trade barriers, our review of ITA’s management of trade barrier cases found that ITA is not adequately addressing the needs of U.S. companies. Specifically, ITA does not strategically manage cases to achieve the Administration’s and the Department’s strategic goals. We found that case contributors manage their cases by individual preference, meaning, they arbitrarily select what case they will work on that day without any clear link to how their daily activities contribute to achieving strategic goals and without guidance and direction from senior management. This approach does not ensure the proper use of case contributor resources because it does not ensure that resources are used for U.S. companies that may need them the most. ITA officials acknowledged that its current approach for managing foreign trade barrier cases does not include a prioritization methodology for preventing, reducing, and removing foreign trade barriers.”

“Additionally, ITA lacks criteria and guidance for prioritizing cases and identifying which cases might be a higher priority than others. Without sufficiently detailed guidance and criteria for consistently and systematically prioritizing cases, ITA is at increased risk of not identifying and focusing its efforts on its most critical trade barrier cases and thereby not taking the steps necessary to resolve them as soon as possible.”

“Furthermore, our analysis of ITA’s trade barrier cases tracked in its Salesforce system identified a significant backlog of unresolved cases that has grown by 125 percent between FY 2017 and FY 2021; some cases have been unresolved for 10 years (see tables 1 and 2 in appendix B). The low rate of successfully closed cases (see table 3 in appendix B) demonstrates that ITA is not keeping up with the growing demand for their assistance from U.S. businesses. ITA management needs to conduct a workforce study to determine its optimal staffing needs to manage trade barrier cases and to clear the current backlog of unresolved cases. Failure of ITA management to align activities and resources to resolve trade barrier cases effectively and efficiently may result in U.S. companies requesting ITA’s assistance but not receiving it in a timely manner.”

“We view ITA’s efforts to address foreign trade barriers as critical in helping U.S. businesses increase exports, but ITA’s subjective process of selecting cases on which to work is a substantial weakness in removing trade barriers that impede exports of U.S. goods and services. Without prioritizing cases, ITA cannot be sure that it is aligning its resources to meet the needs of U.S. businesses and the Administration’s goals. ITA needs to prioritize its resources by focusing on the cases that are considered the highest priority to be effective and to clear the backlog of unresolved cases.”

Possible Solutions

In the business world, such actions would lead to an entire department being cleaned out, especially for actions that lead to the problems this does. The public employees would scream, but it needs to be done. Bring in fresh blood, reiterate that all matters need to be handled by the book, and work from oldest to newest. Make sure the people are trained properly and monitor their activities until the backlog is clear. Set a clear guideline one how long they have to resolve an issue.

It is not unusual that a government agency causes this much grief. To the contrary, it is common and uncalled for. There are too many issues caused by this government, with too few resolved. This should have Congress screaming loudly, but they are not. It would seem, we need politicians in place that understand the problems and work toward the solutions that will work.

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