Situated within the Department of Commerce, the International Trade Administration facilitates cross-border trade for businesses, and its website it designed to guide both U.S. businesses seeking to export goods, and businesses abroad purchasing from the U.S. market. Its resources are designed for the public, rather than lawyers or researchers, and as such focus more on trade processes and logistics than on trade law.
That said, legal researchers may find the guides that the ITA posts on particular topics to provide a useful starting point to the extent that they identify and discuss in plain language certain relevant domestic laws and international frameworks governing a topic. Further, researchers interested in learning more about trade in a particular industry, or about exports to a particular nation or region, may wish to peruse its Country Commercial Guides or the Visual Data Center which provides data concerning exports in particular industries. Some other notable ITA resources include:
- ITA Trade Agreements Guides – concise summaries of multilateral agreements and bilateral investment treaties, including the texts of those agreements.
- STOPfakes.gov – ITA site devoted to intellectual property protection.
- Federal Register – International Trade Administration: Notices concerning the investigations noted above are also published for the public in the Federal Register.
- Westlaw - International Trade Administration - Issues & Decision Memoranda - coverage from 1981, documents sourced from the Federal Register.
- ACCESS Database – repository of documents from proceedings conducted by Commerce’s Enforcement and Compliance division, often antidumping investigations conducted in partnership with the International Trade Commission. Non-parties must register as guest users to access the database.
