TAACs work to support a wide range of technical, planning, and business recovery projects that help companies and the communities that depend on them adapt to international competition and diversify their economies.

“The Trump administration is working every day to help America’s manufacturers, their workers, and their communities,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said in a statement. “This funding is one element of a government-wide effort to restore American jobs and strengthen U.S. manufacturing.”

The announced grants are for the second year of a funding cycle that runs from 2016 to 2021.

SETAAC, a program of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI²), was established in 1974. In addition to serving Georgia, SETAAC works with companies in Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

SETAAC provides up to $75,000 of matching funds for third-party consultants to help guide a client’s economic recovery. Eligible manufacturing firms contribute a matching share to create and implement their respective recovery plan.

In Fiscal Year 2017, SETAAC worked with 45 clients, including Darren Green of The Old Wood Co. in Asheville, North Carolina, and helped those firms generate more than $9.7 million in sales, and help save or create 143 jobs.