AUGSBURG – Assistant United States Trade Representative for Europe and the Middle East Daniel Mullaney and European Commission Deputy Director General from DG GROW, Hubert Gambs, today opened the 11th U.S. -EU Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise (SME) Workshop, hosted by the European Union in Augsburg, Germany. They were joined by the Small Business Administration’s Associate Administrator for International Trade Gabriel Esparza, U.S. Embassy Berlin’s Minister-Counselor for Commercial Affairs and Regional Senior Commercial Officer William Czajkowski, and local German government and business representatives from the Schwaben region.
The conference is convened by the Office of the United States Trade Representative, the Department of Commerce, and the Small Business Administration with the European Commission’s Directorate General for Trade and Directorate General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs. The U.S.-EU SME Workshop is an ongoing opportunity for small businesses to engage directly and discuss relevant topics with government officials from the United States, the European Commission and EU Member States as well as SMEs and associations from both sides of the Atlantic.
The location alternates each year between the United States and the European Union. Topics for discussion included promoting SME growth through U.S.-EU trade opportunities; empowering SMEs, startups and scale-ups including an update on the work of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council to promote SME access to and use of digital tools; SME access to finance; and creating an environment for SMEs to succeed during the post-pandemic transition through economic development and workforce development strategies. The State of Alabama led a small business delegation to the SME Workshop to highlight its export strategy to serve minority and rural small businesses and Alabama-Germany economic partnerships and investment.
U.S. -EU goods and services trade reached $1.1 trillion in 2021. Nearly 95 percent of all U.S. exporters to the EU in 2020 (latest data available) were small- and medium-sized firms.
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