The DLC Project on Trade and Global Markets was founded in 1997 to promote and advance forward-thinking trade policies on globalization and trade in Washington and throughout the country.

With many on the Left and the Right clamoring for anti-trade, isolationist policies, the DLC is among the leading organizations promoting a new approach that recognizes the opportunities created by the global economy, the benefits of open trade and a rules-based system for global commerce, and the imperative of "expanding the winners' circle" of the economy's beneficiaries. For over a decade (and across two millennia), the DLC has worked to "put a human face on the global economy" to build a broader public understanding of its benefits; open markets to America's manufactured goods, services and farm products; support essential security interests in China, the Muslim world and elsewhere; seek pro-poor and pro-shopper reform of some of America's own more regressive trade policies; and provide support for workers and communities managing competition through Trade Adjustment Assistance and other measures.

Our efforts reject the traditional laissez faire, market-will-correct-all-wrongs approach. As such, we support a domestic agenda to give every American the opportunity to share in the rewards as well as the risks of the global marketplace. At the same time, we disagree with those who refuse to acknowledge the inevitability of a global economy and the opportunities for business and workers created by America's competitive edge.

The DLC Project on America, the New Global Economy and Trade:

• sponsors forums and public events to champion the Third Way on globalization.
• develops policy prescriptions for globalization that promote American global economic leadership and domestic expansion of the winners' circle.
• reaches out across the spectrum of the Democratic constituency to forge common ground with development and anti-poverty advocates, organized labor and the environmental community.
• implements a national political strategy that includes:
  1. mobilizing the DLC network of Democratic state and local elected officials supportive of U.S. global economic leadership;
  2. creating a public Democratic voice to support "third way" policies to address the domestic and international issues that arise out of the global economy;
  3. providing information and analysis to members of the New Democrat Coalition and other members of Congress.

The Project is chaired by Claude Fontheim, founder and CEO of Fontheim International LLC.