Trade Capacity Building

Trade capacity building (TCB) is a critical part of the United States' strategy to enable developing countries to negotiate and implement market-opening and reform-oriented trade agreements and to improve their capacity to benefit from increased trade.

The United States is the largest single-country provider of trade-related assistance (also called TCB or Aid for Trade), which includes trade-related physical infrastructure, totaling nearly $2.3 billion in FY2008, up 52 percent from FY2007. Since FY1999, U.S. TCB funding has exceeded $10.2 billion.

Several U.S. government agencies provided trade-related assistance to developing countries: USAID and the Millennium Challenge Corporation are the two largest. A database maintained by USAID contains information on all USG trade-related assistance, by country and type.