Understanding the “Substantial Trade” Requirement for the E1 Visa
What Does “Substantial Trade” Mean for the E1 Visa?
If you’re considering applying for the E1 Treaty Trader Visa, one of the key requirements you’ll need to meet is proving existing and ongoing substantial trade between your treaty country and the United States. But what does “substantial” actually mean?
1. Trade Over Time
Substantial trade isn’t about a single big deal — it’s about ongoing trade activity. Remember, it’s important that the trade between your E1 business and the United States must already exist and must have existed for at least one calendar year prior to applying for an E1 visa.
- Although, as is typical in the world of E visas, there are no specific time limits or requirements, we recommend looking at the last 12 months (not just the last calendar or fiscal year) of trade. Therefore, if you apply in November, you would look back to the prior November and add up all of the trade.
- If your business hasn’t been trading with the U.S. for quite a year, you may want to wait a few months until your trade history meets the requirement. Sometimes business owners will call us and determine that they may not meet the trade threshold at the moment. This is OK! You may be able to increase the trade in the next few months in order to meet the threshold for the prior 12 months. For example, let’s say you currently have only $150,000 USD of the trade with the U.S., but you know that in the next 10 weeks, you have three large orders coming in that will put you at $250,000 of the international trade with the U.S. We can apply once you have those documents to show that the trade value is more “substantial.” Unfortunately, this also works the other way. If, in the 12 months prior to today you have $1,000,000 USD worth of trade but a lot of that came 10-11 months ago, those trades may “fall off” if you wait to file several months from today.
2. Continuous Trade
To show the “continuous” element, the trade should happen regularly, not sporadically. This means that you need many different trades over the course of the last 12 months. How many trades can determine a “continuous” trade? There is no statutory or regulatory answer, but here are our recommendations:
- When we speak about “trades” here, we are talking about an exchange of goods or services. This means that your business sends a good or service to the U.S. and U.S. clients pay for that good or service. Alternatively, your business may pay for U.S. services or goods. We are looking for that trade (exchange) when we talk about a trade.
- Let’s give an example of a trade: When we speak about goods, it’s usually pretty simple to understand – you sell a box of pencils every day to a U.S. client. The trade happens when the buyer sends you the money and you send the pencils to the customer.
When you are providing/selling a service, it sometimes can get a little trickier. Let’s say that you offer IT services to U.S. companies. The trade happens with the U.S. companies pay you and you deliver the services to the U.S. company. In this case, it may be monthly (as in the case of a monthly retainer), or it could be when you send over a document or presentation. It’s important that the services originate from the E1 business in the treaty country. - We tell clients that the E1 business should have at least six trades with the U.S. within the last year. And, those trades should be spread out. We don’t want to show documents from October of last year to October of this year and all six trades happened in the last two months. We want to show at least one trade every other month (or so) for the last year.
- Of course, your business may have many trades with the U.S. Some retail clients have multiple trades every single day.
3. Trade Volume
Finally, volume matters. When we speak about “volume,” we are talking about the trade value in terms of U.S. dollars. While there are no official minimums published by USCIS or the consulates, we usually recommend the following:
- Total trade value with the United States is a minimum $200,000 USD over the last 12 months.
- Same as with the number of trades, we are looking to show value throughout the last year. We don’t want to present documents showing $30,000 over the course of 11 months and then $200,000 in the last three weeks. Consistent and “continuous” trade value is key. Of course the value of each trade can vary, but we want to show that the overall value is “substantial.”
- Volume is at least, if not more, important than the number of trades. Some trades are very inexpensive. Let’s take the pencil example. Your business may sell 10 pencils a day for $1 USD each. Certainly the number of trades would be enough. You would have nearly 4,000 trades per year. However, you would also only have about $4,000 USD in trade. This is not close to the amount needed to convince an officer that the trade is substantial.
📞 Ready to Explore Your Options?
If you’re considering a move to the U.S. via the E-1 or E-2 visa, contact us today to schedule a consultation. We’d love to speak with you about your E1 visa.
