Today, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced the allocation of $300 million in economic relief to U.S. fishermen and seafood industries impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The funds were allocated as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), signed into law on March 27 by President Trump. Commercial fishing, charter/for-hire businesses, qualified aquaculture...

America is an ocean nation with the laws, the resources, the tools, and the expertise to be a seafood superpower. Unfortunately and unnecessarily, our country overwhelmingly relies on imports to meet our seafood demands. Today, President Trump took bold action to secure America’s place as a seafood superpower by removing unnecessary regulations that restrict our seafood industry. This action...

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross today announced that the Department’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) is now accepting applications from eligible grantees for Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) supplemental funds (EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance) intended to help communities prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus. “President Trump is working...

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced today that the Department will initiate an investigation into whether the quantities or circumstances of mobile crane imports into the United States threaten to impair the national security. This decision follows a petition filed by domestic producer, The Manitowoc Company, Inc. (Manitowoc), on December 19, 2019, requesting that the Department of...

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced he will initiate an investigation into whether laminations for stacked cores for incorporation into transformers, stacked and wound cores for incorporation into transformers, electrical transformers, and transformer regulators are being imported into the United States in such quantities or under such circumstances as to threaten to impair the...

Henry Childs, National Director of the Minority Business Development Agency, is leaving the Department of Commerce for a new role promoting economic development in urban and distressed areas. I am very grateful to Henry for his three years of service to the Trump Administration and I wish him well in his new endeavors.

Today, the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released the advance estimate for gross domestic product (GDP) for the first quarter of 2020, finding that real gross domestic product contracted at an annual rate of 4.8 percent. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross issued the following statement in response: "Today’s GDP numbers are weak, but in line with expectations as a...

The Department of Commerce announced today new export control actions to prevent efforts by entities in China, Russia, and Venezuela to acquire U.S. technology that could be used in development of weapons, military aircraft, or surveillance technology through civilian supply chains, or under civilian-use pretenses, for military end uses and military end-users. "It is important to consider the...