Posts Tagged ‘NEI’

In March 2010, President Barack Obama launched a new initiative in an effort to promote small business exporting: stimulate the economy and create much needed jobs. This initiative is called The Obama National Export Initiative: Small Business Exports. If it is successful, we will be seeing many small businesses branching out into the international market, stimulating the economy and producing jobs that range from administrative to warehouse support.

According to the official bill from the White House website, the initiative was promoted by the recent economic and financial crisis. As we all know, millions of people the world over lost their jobs and the current economy worldwide is still very slow in bouncing back. It is the hopes of President Obama that the bill will help stimulate the economy enough to produce new jobs so that those citizens who are underemployed or simply unemployed can return to the work force. It is also hoped that the initiative will work towards stabilizing the American economy with the international economy following not far behind.

The National Export Initiative – shortened to NEI – is expected to help bolster the private sector and the ability for small businesses to engage in exporting activity. The President is confident that it will double the amount of material and product being exported from the United States over the next five years. This will be done by overcoming the many different trade barriers that are in place for small businesses. Some of the hurdles to be overcome: financing; entering the new export market; and getting government support for exporting to other countries that has not always been there before.

A cabinet has been elected by the President to oversee the initiative and the people that have been elected range from the Secretary of State to the Administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA) to the President of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. They are charged with addressing issues such as: helping small and medium sized enterprises enter the exporting markets; offering federal assistance to these companies; leading trade missions in order to promote these small businesses from the United States; ensuring that commercial advocacy is promoted properly; increasing the line export credit available to these businesses; promotion of growth in the exporting markets; reducing trade barriers; and the overall promotion of services trade.

The first plan of this committee is scheduled to hit the President’s desk 180 days after the initiation of the executive order. The plan is to be a comprehensive one that will outline all of the issues to be addressed and how the NEI plans to carry out their goals. Small businesses in the United States seeking to break into the exporting market will be waiting patiently to see how the committee can help them and how fast the goals can be set in place.

Will The Obama National Export Initiative: Small Business Exports be successful? Even if the tiniest trade barrier is taken down through the work of the NEI it can be considered successful. And if the capital financing assistance comes through, small businesses will see themselves grow.