CHARLOTTE — The United States and United Kingdom jointly convened the 9th U.S.-UK Small- and Medium-Sized (SME) Dialogue in Charlotte, North Carolina. Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Small Business Christina Sevilla and Oliver Christian, His Majesty's Trade Commissioner for North America, opened the SME Dialogue. The U.S. Small Business Administration’s Associate Administrator for Manufacturing and Trade Lisa Shimkat also provided remarks on small business manufacturing. The event was hosted by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s U.S. Commercial Service in North Carolina and the North Carolina District Export Council.
Launched in 2018 under the Trump Administration, the U.S.-UK SME Dialogue is convened by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the U.S. Small Business Administration with the UK Department for Business and Trade and the UK Embassy, alternating locations between the United States and the United Kingdom. The SME Dialogue brings together small business stakeholders on both sides together with officials to discuss trade opportunities and challenges and aims to foster increased bilateral trade opportunities for small businesses. Participants at the SME Dialogue discussed U.S.-UK trade interests and barriers; SME commercialization of innovative technologies; small business disaster mitigation and recovery from natural disasters and pandemics, and financing SME exports and start-ups.
The trade relationship between the U.S. and UK amounts to over $300 billion and $1.7 trillion invested in each other’s economies. Around ninety percent of U.S. exporters to the UK are small- and medium-sized firms, with just over 26,000 small businesses across the fifty states exporting $20.3 billion in goods to the United Kingdom.
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