Initial Implementation of the Trade Act of 2002: Final Report

"The Trade Act of 2002 significantly amended the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program by repealing the North American Free Trade Agreement-Transitional Adjustment Assistance (NAFTA-TAA) program and folding some of its provisions into a single, consolidated program of assistance to trade-affected workers. The Act also made significant changes to the TAA program, by adding a number of new features and benefits. With the Act’s major goals in mind, this report examines expanding the number of workers receiving trade benefits, promoting rapid and successful reemployment, promoting collaboration among programs,maintaining fiscal integrity and promote performance accountability, and offering new benefits such as wage insurance for older workers and the Health Coverage Tax Credit." (p.1-3). (Abstractor:Author)

A principal strategy for assisting workers with a quick return to the labor market is to get them into services earlier. To accomplish this, the Act instituted a number of changes aimed at increasing the speed with which trade-affected workers receive assistance. First, as discussed in Chapter II, the Act made a number of changes to streamline the filing and certifying of petitions. While some challenges and delays remain, states generally reported that these improvements increased program efficiency and significantly sped up the filing and certification processes. States generally reported that the Act had no effect on the speed with which potentially eligible trade-affected workers received core or intensive services. Although states reported that the Alternative Trade Adjustment Assistance (ATAA) program posed a number of serious implementation problems and other challenges that resulted in low take-up rates, a number of states were optimistic about the program. They asserted that once the program became better established, participation rates would increase. One of the biggest changes of the Act was doubling the maximum number of weeks of additional TRA customers can receive while in training from 26 to 52. Since fewer than two years had passed between the implementation of this change and the project’s data collection, states reported that they had not yet seen a major impact on completion rates, although they expected them to increase substantially. A final strategy adopted by the Act to promote reemployment was to improve services designed to connect customers to the labor market during training. The Act attempted to do this by relaxing restrictions on the use of OJT and adding customized training as an option for TAA customers. However, despite the Act’s attempts to increase the use of employer-based training, this form of training continued to be used by only a very small number of TAA customers. Administrative barriers, including the lack of time and experience TAA staff have to develop or monitor these types of training contracts, continued to make employer-based training a rarity” (p.v1-v6).(Abstractor: Author)

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2009
• Author(s): D’Amico, Ronald; Dunham, Kate; Goger, Annelies; Mack, Melissa, et al.
• Organizational Author(s): Social Policy Research Associates
• Funding Source: U.S. Department of Labor
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Melissa Mack
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies