Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

26. Trade · Minor · Contested — excluded from counts

Resist more spending on trade adjustment assistance

Done

800 26. Trade · from “The Case for Free Trade”

“Resist calls for more spending on trade adjustment assistance, which is often hijacked for progressive ends. Technology and changing tastes displace six times as many workers as does trade, yet those workers get no such special treatment.”

What has happened

  1. Done

    Trade adjustment assistance spending was not expanded, and the executive branch wound the machinery down. USTR's 2025 Annual Report, delivered to Congress on 2026-03-02, records that the authorizations for Trade Adjustment Assistance for Workers, for Farmers and for Firms all expired in 2022 and "had not been reauthorized as of December 31, 2025". The two bills that would restore them — S. 1449, the Trade Adjustment Assistance Reauthorization Act of 2025 (referred to Finance 2025-04-10), and H.R. 7805, the Trade Adjustment Assistance Modernization Act (referred to Ways and Means 2026-03-04) — are still in committee. On 2026-06-11 the Economic Development Administration went further and removed 13 CFR part 315, the Trade Adjustment Assistance for Firms regulations, effective 2028-09-30, reciting that all Trade Adjustment Assistance Center grants will have been closed out without possibility of renewal by that date.

  2. Done

    The administering agency's own account is the earliest dated in-window instrument, and it is dismantling rather than spending. The Department of Labor's Trade Adjustment Assistance page tells a trade-displaced worker that since the Section 285(a) termination provision took effect on 2022-07-01, "[u]ntil further notice, the Department may not issue any determinations and may not accept any new petitions or requests for reconsideration", and records that the Petition Automated Workflow System — the public route for filing TAA petitions — "was fully decommissioned effective May 14, 2025". Petitions now go by fax or e-mail, for a program that may not accept them. DOL has published nothing seeking reauthorization, and its last Annual Report to Congress on the state of the TAA Program is FY2023: the reports index runs 2023, 2021, 2020, 2019 back to 2009, with no FY2024 and no FY2025 report.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Contested Recommendation from “The Case for Free Trade”. Leveled done under §3b’s reading of a “preserve”/“continue” ask: the Quote asks the administration to resist more spending, calls for more spending were made (S. 1449 and H.R. 7805), they were not answered, and the executive took a positive step in the opposite direction by removing the TAAF regulations. If a reauthorization is enacted this becomes reversed.
  • The agency-side half of the record was opened on 2026-09-03 (read-queue ticket 04). dol.gov was recorded as a 403 wall at the apex; it is not — every DOL path tried opened to the full browser header set. The three questions the read-queue row asked are answered on DOL’s own pages: no petitions are being processed (the Department “may not issue any determinations”, and the filing system was destroyed on 2025-05-14); the TAA Community College and Career Training grants have no residue there (TAACCCT appears nowhere in the page’s navigation or body — the only grant-adjacent content is Work-Based Learning practitioner resources for already-certified workers); and DOL has published nothing asking for reauthorization. The reports index (https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/tradeact/reports, read 2026-09-03) is undated as a page and is a note-body observation, not frontmatter Evidence.
  • The alternative reading — that a “resist” ask is a posture rather than an action on an object and so can only ever be not started — is a different rung and is flagged for the consistency pass.
  • Overlaps #2115 (deliver any expansion as cash) and #2116 (treat trade-displaced workers the same as everyone else) on printed p. 806. All three turn on the same fact: the TAA statutes lapsed in 2022 and nothing in the window revived them. The consequence differs per Quote — done here, not started for #2115 because its condition never arose, and pre_satisfied for #2116 because its object was already in the asked-for state.
Action
restrict
Object
Trade adjustment assistance spending
ID
2098