Developing countries expressed reservations about undertaking further trade liberalization at the 1999 Seattle WTO ministerial conference, as they were still experiencing economic difficulties despite previous market reforms. In response to developing country concerns, the 2001 WTO Doha Ministerial Declaration said that technical assistance should be designed to assist developing, least-developed, and low-income countries to meet their WTO obligations and draw on the benefits of an open, rules-based multilateral trading system. To implement the declaration, in December 2001, the WTO created the Doha Development Agenda Global Trust Fund to help developing countries build capacity and establish a reliable basis for funding WTO-related technical assistance (to which the United States has contributed $3 million, to date). In addition, in November 2002, the WTO and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) created a database to provide comprehensive information on bilateral donor and multilateral/regional agency support for trade capacity building. The Congress included trade capacity building in the African Growth and Opportunity Act of 2000 to help eligible countries meet the act’s requirements. The act provides that sustained economic growth in sub- Saharan Africa depends in large measure on the development of a receptive environment for trade and investment. The act instructs the U.S. Customs Service to provide technical assistance to beneficiary countries in developing and implementing visa systems for textile transshipment and for antitransshipment enforcement. In addition, the Congress, in the Bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority Act of 2002, declared that among the principal negotiating objectives of the United States are to strengthen the capacity of the U.S. trading partners to promote respect for core labor standards and to protect the environment. That act calls for the President to seek to establish consultative mechanisms with parties to trade agreements to promote respect for core labor standards and compliance with International Labor Organization conventions on child labor, to develop and implement standards for the protection of the environment and human health, based on sound science. It provides for the President to direct the Secretary of Labor to provide technical assistance to countries wishing to establish trade agreements on its labor laws, if needed. In providing funding for trade capacity building in the foreign operations appropriations for fiscal years 2003 and 2004, the House appropriators called trade capacity building a critical element of development assistance because it can “be leveraged to generate economic growth, reduce poverty, promote rule of law….” The Congress earmarked funds appropriated in fiscal years 2003 and 2004 for trade capacity building. Specifically, the Congress provided that not less than $452 million in fiscal year 2003 should be made available for trade capacity building. Out of this amount, $159 million and $2.5 million were earmarked for USAID and USTDA, respectively. Similarly, in fiscal year 2004, the Congress provided that not less than $503 million should be made available for trade capacity building with $190 million earmarked specifically for USAID. The appropriations for each of those fiscal years also provided for funding from accounts managed by other agencies, including the Departments of State and Treasury, although amounts were not specified for the individual accounts. U.S. trade capacity building is primarily a collection of existing activities placed under the umbrella of trade capacity building by a U. S. government survey. Initiated in 2001, this survey was to capture, qualitatively and quantitatively, U.S. agencies’ existing activities promoting trade-related capacity building in transitioning economies and developing countries. The survey defined trade capacity building and asked agencies to place their assistance into a range of categories and estimate funding obligated for each category. U.S. trade capacity building is not a discrete area with its own budget. However, 18 agencies have self-reported that they obligated almost $2.9 billion for trade capacity building activities in over 100 countries from fiscal years 2001 through 2004. Overall, the assistance was distributed worldwide, although the focus differed somewhat from region to region. USAID reported providing 71 percent of the trade capacity building assistance. The U.S. government survey administered by USAID defined trade capacity building as activities meant to help countries become aware of and accede to the WTO; implement WTO agreements; and build the physical, human, and institutional capacity to benefit more broadly from a rules-based trading system. The survey asked agencies to place their assistance into several categories, including WTO awareness, WTO agreements, trade facilitation, human resources and labor standards, physical and economic infrastructure, agriculture development, environmental sector trade and standards, financial sector development, competition policy and foreign investment incentives, and services trade development (table 1 provides further information about these categories). Agencies estimated their obligated funding for each category from 2001 through 2004. The largest obligations were for trade facilitation at 27 percent, followed by human resources and labor standards at 16 percent, agriculture development at 12 percent, financial sector development at 11 percent, and physical infrastructure development at 8 percent. The governance, transparency, and interagency coordination category and the WTO-related category each received an estimated 6 percent of this assistance (see fig. 1). According to the database, a significant portion of U.S. funding for trade capacity building assistance, or 27 percent, supported trade facilitation activities such as business services and training, export promotion, customs operation and administration, and E-commerce development and information technologies. For instance, to facilitate trade in El Salvador and Ghana, USAID financed matching grants to artisans and small-to- medium-sized firms for business services training, product design, and packaging. U.S. assistance helped several artisans and firms develop ways to increase their capacity to market and export their products by improving product design and packaging and arranging trade fair visits to the United States and Europe (see figs. 2 and 3). In another example of trade facilitation, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials trained Ghana’s Customs, Excise, and Preventive Service officials in procedures to comply with the African Growth and Opportunity Act textile visa enforcement system to prevent illegal transshipment and use of counterfeit documents relating to the importation of apparel products into the United States (see fig. 4). The U.S. Department of Labor funds a number of programs to strengthen labor systems and improve occupational safety and health. For instance, a project in Central America seeks to improve labor law compliance, while another project in Central America aims to reduce the incidence of workplace injuries. In Ghana, USAID provided technical assistance to a government committee drafting new labor legislation and focused on increasing worker collective bargaining by encouraging workers to work with members of the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. For agriculture development, assistance is used to extend the benefits of trade to rural sectors and support trade-related aspects of agribusiness. In Ghana and El Salvador, U.S. assistance is supporting Salvadoran and Ghanaian food producers’ efforts to meet sanitary and phytosanitary standards through training. In El Salvador, U.S. assistance helped small- to-medium-sized farmers export fruits and vegetables (see fig. 5). U.S. Department of Agriculture officials also helped African nations meet export requirements under the African Growth and Opportunity Act by sponsoring training on quality control, risk analysis, and food safety. Under the category of financial sector development, U.S. assistance supports reforms in banking and securities markets and implementation of laws and regulations that promote trade-related investment to provide an enabling environment for international trade. For instance, several U.S. Treasury officials have worked to reform Ghana’s banking and tax systems. Specifically, these U.S. officials have helped the government of Ghana to restructure the funding relationship between the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank, improve tax collection procedures, and strengthen the financial sector. U.S. assistance for physical infrastructure development helps establish trade-related telecommunications, transport, ports, airports, power, water, and industrial zones. For instance, according to USAID, U.S. assistance to improve the telecommunications sector helps Egypt’s ability to increase trade and investment (see fig. 6). U.S. telecommunications infrastructure projects have led to the installation of hundreds of thousands of telephone lines, serving more than 4 million Egyptians. Joint U.S.-Egyptian investments in the sector have supported the institutional strengthening of Egypt Telecom and the improvement and expansion of telecommunications networks throughout Egypt. Under a current telecommunications project, a state-of-the-art network operations center is being constructed, and several initiatives to strengthen the telecommunications infrastructure system are being carried out. U.S. trade capacity building supports an array of activities to help developing countries participate fully in the WTO and the global trading system generally and to implement their current and future trade commitments. For example, U.S. assistance helped create a WTO unit within the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Trade to enable the ministry to participate in international trade negotiations and implement trade agreements. Moreover, this assistance provided training to unit officials on trade policy formulation and equipment to allow these officials to develop statistics and databases related to trade. This assistance supports institutional reform to improve governance and make policies more transparent. It also helps different ministries function more effectively in the trade policy arena. For example, in Ghana, U.S. assistance has supported workshops for the government, the private sector, and civil society to discuss and develop Ghana’s trade policy. The United States supports trade capacity building assistance globally, covering six regions including Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Republics, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. The Middle East and North Africa received the most funding, or 24 percent (see fig. 7). Funding per category of trade capacity building varied by region (see fig. 8). Overall, the trade facilitation category dominated with about a third of the funding in each region except for sub-Saharan Africa (about 27 percent) and Asia (about 17 percent). In Asia, the human resources and labor standards category received the most trade capacity building funding.