United States Commercial Service

The United States Commercial Service (CS) is the trade promotion arm of the U.S. Department of Commerce's International Trade Administration. CS is a part of the U.S. Foreign Service and its commercial officers are diplomats. The CS global network of trade professionals helps thousands of U.S. companies to export goods and services worth billions of dollars every year. CS trade specialists are located throughout the United States, as well as in U.S. embassies and consulates in over 75 countries around the world. The mission of CS is to advance and protect strategic U.S. commercial and economic interests around the world.

The impact of this work ripples throughout the U.S. economy—broadening and deepening the U.S. exporter base, removing obstacles to the export success of U.S. small and medium-sized companies, advancing U.S. business interests around the world, attracting foreign direct investment, and supporting job creation throughout the United States. In 2013 alone, the CS helped in more than 18,000 export transactions in nearly 200 international markets worth billions of dollars.

The CS helps small and medium-sized American businesses increase international sales through four core services:

CS also protects the interests of American companies overseas through commercial diplomacy and promotes investment to the United States through the SelectUSA program housed at the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Today's U.S. Commercial Service was foreshadowed in 1897 when the United States Department of State created the Bureau of Foreign Commerce and approved for the first time public distribution of diplomatic, consular and commercial reports. Also in 1897, U.S. Senator Albert J. Beveridge sounded a theme for the next century: "American factories are making more than the American people can use … fate has written our policy for us — the trade of the world must and shall be ours." Although many today may reject this rhetoric and espouse instead the mutual benefits of trade, the central role of trade in our politics and in our economic prosperity seems beyond question.

1903 The short-lived United States Department of Commerce and Labor is established, subsuming the State Department's Bureau of Foreign Commerce and the Treasury Department's Bureau of Statistics.

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