About Our APIs

Through its Trade Developer Portal, the International Trade Administration (ITA) provides APIs to data intended for public use and dissemination. Trade experts from ITA and from Trade Promotion Coordinating Committee (TPCC) agencies produce the wide spectrum of data provided by these APIs. Developers who work with trade and exporting information will find this data particularly useful as it originates from authoritative, federal government sources.

We publish these APIs to help developers access information on exporting that they can then make available to businesses, which is a core tenet of the ITA. The APIs also conform to President Obama’s Open Data Policy that advances the management of Government information as an asset. The policy directs agencies to “Collect or create information in a way that supports downstream information processing and dissemination activities,” which has four requirements:

1. Use machine-readable and open formats
2. Use data standards
3. Ensure information stewardship through the use of open licenses
4. Use common core and extensible metadata

In addition to meeting these requirements we include additional documentation and support through this developer portal:

1. We use machine-readable and open formats and we also provide additional guidance on how to best use the information.
2. We follow data standards that promote interoperability and actively open up datasets that are common across many trade organizations.
3. We place no restrictions on copying, publishing, distributing, transmitting, adapting, or otherwise using the information and encourage developers to do so.
4. We use common core metadata to describe our information and also provide crosswalks between our taxonomies and other known taxonomies.

In addition to publishing a growing number of datasets, ITA is using the datasets to populate its own Web sites. ITA will be publishing new datasets on an ongoing basis to help developers help exporters, and to expand the breadth of information available on trade.gov and export.gov.

What’s Possible

Developers have a wealth of opportunities to turn ITA’s trade information into useful and valuable applications for exporters. Immediate ideas for using the trade information include:

• Add ITA’s Trade Event, Trade Leads, Market Research, and Trade News & Articles to specific Country pages.
• Create a widget that aggregates event information, including ITA’s Trade Events, for businesses in particular industries.
• Include ITA’s Offices & Centers in a list of resources for businesses in a particular State.