From Aid to Trade: Delivering Results. A Cross-Country Evaluation of USAID Trade Capacity Building.

摘要

World trade has undergone a dramatic expansion over the last thirty years. Growth rates for international commerce have surpassed those for both population and production. Coupled with revolutions in transportation and communications, cooperation among governments to open markets and lower trade barriers has enabled this historic expansion. Most remarkably, the share of world trade from developing countries has surpassed that of industrial countries, mirroring a parallel rise in income and purchasing power in the developing world. Even so, not all countries have participated equally in these advances. Many poor countries still strive to fully benefit from integration into global markets. Trade capacity building (TCB) assistance seeks partnerships with these countries and leverages the opportunities presented by trends in technology, market access, and expanding global demand. The ultimate goal of this assistance is to expand the number of people that benefit from global trade. Overall, this evaluation concludes that USAID and U.S. government programs have contributed substantively toward this goal. Project documents detail a range of successful USAID strategies that help firms and governments meet the demands of the international marketplace, improve the policy environment for trade, and enable countries trade and logistics systems to function more efficiently. The evaluation found U.S. assistance to be significantly associated with increases in the value of recipient countries exports, after controlling for a wide range of factors that have influenced international trade flows over the last decade.