Globalization promotes vast business opportunities for trade, flow of capital, ideas, and people. In order to integrate into the global economy, countries tend to promote policies, which in turn, help to remove barriers to the flow of investment, goods, and services. While there is ample information describing how multinational corporations have benefited from globalization through greater access to international markets and investment, there is a need to identify ways to unburden small to medium-sized enterprises so that they can reach their potential in the global economy. Barriers vary across business sectors. However, there are fundamental impediments that prevail, in general. The barriers to SME exports add to the resistance of their leaders to launch businesses outside of the NAFTA region. This descriptive paper summarizes international trade activity of USbased SMEs and focuses on key export barriers to US-based SMEs. An analysis of demographics and purchasing power of and Brazil, Russia, India and China is conducted, suggesting opportunities for US-based SMEs export to those markets.