Yesterday, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing on reforming the U.S. commercial diplomacy system. At this hearing, Rep. Bera (D–CA) posed a series of questions on coordination across the interagency and helping U.S. firms navigate the wide range of federal tools designed to boost their competitiveness overseas. As Congress and the administration look to modernize the commercial diplomacy system, the Council proposes a concrete step to improve access to government resources: a Navigation Hub at the Department of Commerce.
The federal government invests billions of dollars annually in programs designed to help American companies compete in foreign markets. These programs span more than a dozen agencies—the State Department, the Export-Import Bank (EXIM), the Development Finance Corporation, and many others—and offer services in commercial diplomacy, market intelligence, project preparation, development finance, export credit, and trade advocacy. It is, on paper, a comprehensive export support architecture.
Yet, many American companies are unaware these resources exist or are unsure which agency to contact when pursuing an opportunity abroad. A company pursuing an overseas opportunity might need commercial diplomacy support from one agency, feasibility funding from another, and export financing from a third—each with its own intake process, its own points of contact, and no shared entry point. The result is a fragmented system that asks companies to navigate the bureaucracy on their own.
While this is true for companies of all sizes, it is especially true for startups, including those developing next-generation energy technologies, and small and mid-sized firms. A 2022 survey conducted by the National Small Business Association and EXIM found that the single biggest barrier for companies interested in exporting is that they simply don’t know where to start. Nearly half of small businesses report difficulty understanding or navigating the existing system. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has been cataloging this exact problem in reports for over thirty years—fragmented programs, overlapping services, confused businesses—and no interagency coordination mechanism has managed to fix it.
This fragmentation carries a competitive cost. When Chinese state-backed enterprises pursue opportunities overseas, they arrive with financing, technical assistance, and diplomatic backing bundled into a single package. American companies pursuing the same opportunities must assemble that support on their own, agency by agency.
Resolving this competitive disparity will require a large-scale, whole-of-government approach, but a practical first step would address the navigation problem directly. Congress should establish and fund a “Navigation Hub” at the Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration (ITA) to serve as a single entry point—a front door—for any American company seeking federal support to compete in foreign markets. Whether a company needs help identifying buyers, accessing feasibility funding, securing export financing, or resolving a trade barrier, the hub would route it to the appropriate contact at the relevant agency. ITA, with a mission to help American businesses compete globally, is the natural home for this.
There is precedent for this approach within ITA itself. The Department of Commerce recently established a National AI Center to serve as a single gateway for American AI companies seeking to export their technologies. The center gives companies a unified entry point to government resources and international market support, with dedicated staff routing them to financing, diplomatic backing, and regulatory assistance across agencies. The proposal here applies the same logic—but with a congressional mandate to ensure a long-lived program that serves businesses across the economy. This proposal also builds on ITA’s current network of Export Assistance Centers and more niche mechanisms at other agencies.
The federal government has built an extensive toolkit for helping American companies compete abroad. The missing piece is a front door. Congress should establish one with dedicated funding and a clear mandate so that the companies these programs were designed to serve can find and use them.