U.S. Department of Commerce Advocacy Center

The U.S. Department of Commerce Advocacy Center is responsible for managing the Department of Commerce representatives to the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) . These representatives are responsible for protecting American commercial interests at the MDBs, which altogether finance development projects worth billions of dollars throughout the world. With these representatives reporting to the Center, the USG hopes to markedly increase the proportion of MDB tenders won by American firms.

 

At any given time, the Center’s regional project managers are coordinating approximately 250-300 pending advocacy requests worldwide. While many of these requests are filed by larger U.S. commercial interests, approximately 25-30 percent are submitted by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Indeed, the universe of SMEs is the target audience of the Advocacy Center’s ongoing outreach efforts. In addition, because most SMEs lack the human and financial resources available to their larger commercial counterparts, the Center created, and launched, several new initiatives in the last couple of years to assist SMEs as they compete for specific export transactions overseas. The Center’s primary objective was to leverage USG export promotion programs on behalf of SME clients as soon as they contacted the Advocacy Center requesting traditional trade advocacy support.