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Privileged Information Exempt from Public Disclosure
Almost every MDCP project will require that privileged commercial or financial information be shared with the International Trade Administration (ITA). To the full extent permitted by law and Administration policy, ITA protects privileged trade secrets, commercial, and financial information that is submitted in the course of MDCP competitions and MDCP projects.
Summarized below are instances where MDCP applicants, MDCP award recipients, and ITA should claim and respect designations of privileged information.
MDCP Applications
MDCP applicants that do not wish portions of their MDCP applications to be disclosed publicly do the following:
1. Insert brackets around the information in question, and
2. Include the following notice at the top of the affected page:
“Brackets [ ] on this page identify privileged commercial information exempt from public disclosure without the consent of the provider” or, if more appropriate
“Brackets [ ] on this page identify privileged financial information exempt from public disclosure without the consent of the provider”
An MDCP applicant selected to receive an MDCP award is a cooperator. Within a few days of receiving its MDCP award, a cooperator creates a public version of its application that redacts the bracketed information for which the cooperator claimed privileged treatment. ITA posts this “public version” in its list of MDCP projects. See, e.g. Auto Care Association's public application.
MDCP Award Recipient (Cooperator)
Success Agreements and Questionnaires and Surveys of Export Results: Companies participating in MDCP project activity are expected to report any resulting exports to the cooperator. In order to assure participants that their information will be accorded privileged treatment, the cooperator should indicate in its success agreement and in any questionnaires and surveys that information about export sales that the participating company provides “shall be treated as privileged commercial information exempt from public disclosure without the consent of the provider.”
Responses to Questionnaires and Surveys of Export Results:Once privileged commercial information has been reported to the cooperator, any documentation of such information that is provided to ITA must be formatted as follows by the cooperator:
1. Insert brackets around the information in question, and
2. Include the following notice at the top of the affected page:
“Brackets [ ] on this page identify privileged commercial information exempt from public disclosure without the consent of the provider”
ITA
ITA Marking of Submitted Export Sale Information: Because cooperator responses to Part A2 of ITA’s quarterly project progress report (PPR) include export sales information submitted by individual companies, the Part A2 database is not publicly disclosed. Within ITA this database is identified with the heading “Privileged commercial information exempt from public disclosure without the consent of the provider”
Summaries: ITA publicly discloses summaries of reported exports sales such as the total exports to a particular country in a particular reporting quarter. ITA does not publicly disclose individual export sale information without the consent of the provider of such information.
The International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, manages this global trade site to provide access to ITA information on promoting trade and investment, strengthening the competitiveness of U.S. industry, and ensuring fair trade and compliance with trade laws and agreements. External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein. This site contains PDF documents. A PDF reader is available from Adobe Systems Incorporated.