State Trade Expansion Advances

Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship today reported out a bill  modifying the State Trade Expansion Program (STEP) .

“Through today’s legislation, we’re helping to make STEP more flexible and easier to administer in order to increase the number of small businesses that access and compete in international markets,” said Chair Shaheen.

“When I created STEP in 2010, I sought to help small businesses offset the cost of training, market research, website upgrades and trade missions to begin or expand sales internationally.

By modernizing STEP, it will now be simpler for small businesses to access these resources.

I look forward to continuing to work together as we consider additional, bipartisan legislation that strengthens the economy and our local communities.”

The STEP Modernization Act of 2024 updates STEP by streamlining the application, reporting and compliance requirements, improving award consistency and transparency and establishing a formula that will replace the current competitive process for determining award amounts once appropriations reach a set level.

Lead sponsors are Chair Shaheen and Ranking Member Ernst.


Chair Shaheen helped create STEP as a pilot program in 2010. The program was fully authorized by Shaheen’s small business trade amendment, which was signed into law in 2016.

Since its creation, the STEP program has awarded $235.5 million in grants and directly supported over 13,000 small businesses' international expansion and export growth. As states improve their exporting skills, the return on investment keeps improving. In 2022, every $1 in STEP funding yielded $43 in U.S. export sales, according to the bill's sponsors.