Commerce Department budget focuses on expanding exports

The Obama administration makes boosting the nation's exports a priority in the fiscal year 2012 budget for the Commerce Department. 

While the budget request cuts the department's discretionary spending to $8.77 billion, $5.1 billion less than the $13.87 billion enacted in 2010, it redirects spending from last year's census to spurring economic growth with a focus on exports. 

Excluding the Census, Obama is proposing a 16 percent increase for the agency compared with 2010, when a budget was last enacted.

"This budget makes some tough but responsible choices that will put the government on a sounder financial footing," Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said Monday in a statement.

The White House would boost funding for many agencies, including the International Trade Administration and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), as it seeks to increase exports.

The Obama administration's budget request proposes a 15.7 percent increase in the budget, about $70 million, to $517 million for the International Trade Administration (ITA) and $78.5 million for National Export Initiative activities, which would double exports in five years. 

Some of that funding would come from an estimated $20 million in savings from restructuring ITA to focus on "high-priority markets and industries," Rebecca Blank, acting deputy secretary of Commerce, told reporters on a conference call.

Part of cutting costs, the administration will relocate foreign commercial service officials to “high-priority markets” such as China, Blank said.

"With this funding, ITA can strengthen its efforts to promote exports from small businesses; help enforce international free trade agreements; fight to eliminate barriers to sales of U.S. products; and improve the competitiveness of U.S. firms," the budget said. 

The administration also proposed an increase in funding to $76 million from $58 million for the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which covers its expenses from fees charged on financing to exporters.

The administration plans to spend $167 million in fiscal 2012 to promote trade eventually reaching $2.4 billion through fiscal 2016, similar to the the proposal in last year's budget that wasn't enacted. 

"It’s a budget that recognizes that the most important contest is not between Democrats and Republicans but between the U.S. and countries around the world that will be competing for the jobs and the industries of the future," Blank said. 

The budget for the decennial census falls to $498 million from $6.75 billion with overall funding for the Census Department dropping to $1.025 billion from $7.225 billion. 

The request makes "important investments in innovation that will spark private sector job growth and initiatives that will help connect U.S. companies with the 95 percent of the world’s consumers who live outside our borders," the budget said. 

The administration proposes $1 billion for NIST from $863 million in fiscal 2010, an increase of more than 16 percent. 

The budget request provides an additional $46.3 million for Economic Development Assistance’s Economic Adjustment Assistance program to help communities deal with trade-related economic impacts or other sudden economic challenges, and $40 million for EDA’s Regional Innovation Program to stimulate regional economic development and job creation.

Economic Adjustment Assistance will be increased in part by cutting EDA’s 21st Century Innovation Infrastructure program, resulting in a savings of $37.3 million.