T rade Adjustment Assistance for Workers (TAA) provides federal assistance to workers who involuntarily lose their jobs due to foreign competition. The primary benefits for TAA-eligible workers are funding for training and reemployment services as well as income support while a worker is enrolled in training. Workers may also be eligible for other benefits, including a tax credit equal to a portion of qualified health insurance premiums. Workers age 50 and over may be eligible for Reemployment Trade Adjustment Assistance, a wage supplement program. After a brief discussion of the program's purpose and most recent reauthorization, this report describes TAA as reauthorized by the Trade Adjustment Assistance Reauthorization Act of 2015 (TAARA, Title IV of P.L. 114-27 ). Reduced barriers to international trade are widely acknowledged to offer benefits to consumers in the form of increased choices and lower prices. Expanded trade may also offer expansionary opportunities to firms that produce goods or services that see increased exports. Reduced barriers to trade may, however, have concentrated negative effects on domestic industries and workers that face increased competition. TAA is designed to provide readjustment assistance to workers who suffer dislocation (job loss) due to foreign competition or offshoring. Generally, TAA provides a more robust set of benefits and services than would be available to a worker who lost his or her job for reasons other than foreign competition. TAA is designed to assist workers who have been adversely affected by reduced trade barriers and increased trade. Its availability to workers who are adversely affected by declines in international trade may be limited. TAA was created in 1962 and, historically, has been reauthorized alongside expansionary trade policies. A detailed legislative history of the program is in the Appendix . In June 2015, TAA was reauthorized by TAARA. The eligibility and benefit provisions of TAARA are authorized to continue through June 30, 2021. TAARA was part of a bill that extended other trade-related policies. TAARA was also passed in conjunction with a separate bill that reauthorized the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA, Title I of P.L. 114-26 ). TPA (also known as "fast track") grants the President authority to negotiate trade agreements, which are then subject to an "up or down" vote in Congress. Since the reauthorization of TPA in 2015, Congress has not voted on any presidentially negotiated trade agreements. This report focuses on the eligibility and benefit provisions of TAA as enacted by TAARA. These provisions apply to all workers certified for TAA after the law's enactment. The law also had retroactivity provisions and, in some cases, workers who were parts of groups certified prior to the 2015 reauthorization may be covered under the TAARA provisions. In other cases, however, a worker who was certified under pre-2015 provisions may continue to receive benefits under the prior provisions. As such, while the version of the program described in this report will apply to all new program participants certified through June 30, 2021, it may not apply to some participants who are covered by a TAA petition that was certified prior to the enactment of TAARA. In these cases, states may operate multiple TAA programs to concurrently serve workers certified under the TAARA provisions and workers certified under other provisions. TAA is jointly administered by the federal government and the states. It is funded by the federal government. The respective roles of federal and state governments in administering and financing the TAA program were in place prior to TAARA and were not substantively changed by the reauthorization law. TAA is jointly administered by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and cooperating state agencies. DOL makes group eligibility determinations, allots appropriated funds to cooperating state agencies, and oversees grantees. Individual benefits are provided through state workforce systems and state unemployment insurance systems. Workers may physically receive benefits and services through local American Job Centers (also known as One-Stop Career Centers). States are responsible for collecting participation and outcome data and reporting these data to DOL. The Health Coverage Tax Credit, which is available to qualified TAA-certified workers who purchase qualified health insurance, is administered by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). It is administered separately from the TAA program's other benefits and services. TAA is funded by mandatory appropriations. Typically, Congress appropriates a single sum that supports all TAA activities. DOL then allocates these funds to various program activities. Under TAARA, funding for training and reemployment services is capped at $450 million per year. These funds are allotted to the states via a grant allocation formula that considers past and anticipated program usage. States may expend training and reemployment service funds in the year of allotment or in either of the next two fiscal years. Training subsidies are states' primary expenditures out of their reemployment services funding. TAARA specifies that states must allocate at least 5% of their reemployment services funding to case management and no more than 10% to administrative costs. Funds for the Trade Readjustment Allowance income support and Reemployment Trade Adjustment Assistance wage insurance program are not capped. Appropriations for these benefits are based on congressional estimates. Funding for these benefits that is not spent in the year of allotment is returned to the Treasury. TAA is a direct spending (also referred to as "mandatory") program and subject to sequestration under the Budget Control Act of 2011, as amended. For FY2018, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) determined that the reduction for nonexempt, nondefense spending would be 6.6%. Sequester levels in subsequent years will be determined by OMB. In FY2018, Congress appropriated $790 million for the TAA for Workers programs. Of this amount, $450 million was for training and reemployment services and the remaining $340 million was for income support and wage insurance. The entire $790 million appropriation was subject to 6.6% sequestration ($52.14 million). DOL opted to apply the entirety of the sequestration to the training and reemployment services funding, reducing the funding for training and reemployment services from $450 million to $397.86 million and leaving the $340 million for income support and wage insurance unchanged. Obtaining TAA benefits is a two-stage process. First, a group of workers or their representative (e.g., firm, union, or state) must petition DOL to establish that their job loss was attributable to foreign trade and met statutory criteria. Once a group has been certified by DOL, individual workers covered by the group's petition apply for state-administered benefits at local American Job Centers (AJCs; also known as One-Stop Career Centers). TAA is available to workers in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. To be eligible for TAA group certification, a group of workers from a firm (or a subdivision of a firm) must have become totally or partially separated from their employment or have been threatened with becoming totally or partially separated. Private sector workers who produce goods ("articles" in the law) or services are eligible for TAA. The petitioning workers must establish that foreign trade contributed importantly to their separation. The role of foreign trade can be established in one of several ways: An increase in competitive imports . The sales or production of the petitioning firm have decreased absolutely and imports of articles or services like or directly competitive with those produced by the petitioning firm have increased. A shift in production to a foreign country . The workers' firm has moved production of the articles or services that the petitioning workers produced to a foreign country or the firm has acquired, from a foreign provider, articles or services that are directly competitive with those produced by the workers. Adversely affected secondary workers . The petitioning firm is a supplier or a downstream producer to a TAA-certified firm and either (1) the sales or production for the TAA-certified firm accounted for at least 20% of the sales or production of the petitioning firm or (2) a loss of business with a TAA-certified firm contributed importantly to the workers' job losses. USITC workers . Workers separated from firms that have been publicly identified by the United States International Trade Commission (USITC) as injured by a market disruption or other qualified action. The TAA eligibility criteria are designed to target workers who lose their jobs due to increased international trade and increased imports. The structure of the eligibility criteria mean that the program may not be available to workers who are adversely affected by reductions in international trade or declines in exports. To establish TAA eligibility, a group of workers (or their representative, such as a union, firm, or state) must complete a two-page petition and submit it, along with any supporting documentation, to DOL. An additional copy of the TAA petition must also be filed with the governor of the state in which the affected firm is located. After receiving the petition, DOL investigates to determine if the petition meets any of the criteria outlined in the previous subsection of this report. Determinations of TAA petitions are published in the Federal Register and on the DOL website. If a petition is certified, DOL will also determine an impact date on which trade-related layoffs began or threatened to begin. This date can be as early as one year prior to the petition. A certified petition will cover all workers laid off by the firm (or applicable subdivision of the firm) between the impact date and two years after the certification of the petition. For example, if a petition is certified on November 1, 2015, and the impact date is found to be March 1, 2015, all members of the certified group laid off between March 1, 2015, and November 1, 2017, would be eligible for TAA benefits. If a petition is denied, the group may request administrative reconsideration by DOL.