page_title: Global Trade Exchange
section_title: Global Trade Exchange project
hierarchical_section_title: Global Trade Exchange / Global Trade Exchange project
caption_attribution_description: English: US DHS project
context_page_description: The Global Trade Exchange is, or was, a controversial Homeland Security intelligence project, related to maritime-ports data-mining, being one of three pillars of the Safe Ports Act-related Secure Freight Initiatives. The Global Trade Exchange has a mysterious history dating from conception in 2004, a 2007-2008 year of hype, and sudden placement on "hold" status. Described as a ready-to-buy, commercially available database, the GTX was rush-funded by Congress as part of and championed relentlessly by then-United States Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff in evident disregard of objections of confused and frustrated U.S. private sector trade groups. After a year-long spate of official support, media hype, and after award of Congressional funding of $13 million, the GTX was put "on hold for further study by the [U.S.] Navy" in April 2008, for reasons still yet to-be explained. Touted by senior U.S. officials and Congress in 2007 as an anti-terrorism database for tracking long-haul shipping containers, the Global Trade Exchange's principal focus appears to have a different focus, notably advance trade-finance information for market-making purposes.
context_section_description: Despite that the GTX was, in principle, a ready-to-purchase database of corporate data which was collected, the actual content of the global trade exchange was never fully presented to either the media nor to U.S. trade groups.  Clues to the premise of the project can be found in the GTX statement of work, provided in the 2008 request for quote, released to a small select group of companies, in December 2008.
  GTX is envisioned as a privately operated, self-sustaining (e.g. user-fee based) trade information system that will collect commercial transaction data not currently available to us from parties in the supply chain who have contracted or provided services for the production/movement of international shipments and allow government and trade community participants to input and access trade data through an information broker on an expanded global basis. Data maintained by the GTX broker will be available to participating customs agencies 24X7 in the appropriate technical format.
  The commercial transaction data was to have been run by a private company information broker performing the following functions:  
  Collection, integration, and transmission of data and images from multiple sources;
  Coordinating the participation of all supply chain parties (e.g. foreign host governments & shippers) providing information to GTX;
  Establishing and maintaining all necessary communications and interfaces;
  Ensuring protection of all collected and/or transmitted by the GTX;
  Transmitting data to participating foreign government systems in compliance with foreign government requirements.
caption: Global Trade Exchange (GTX)[1] as presented by Northrop Grumman, at a U.S. Government-sponsored Trade and Investment Seminar, Amman, Jordan, 2008
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