I don't know that it's specifically from the U.S., but we do have the Red Seal program working with the Canadian Council of Directors of Apprenticeship. Any time that they consider an occupation to be certified as red seal, there is a process. There needs to be a sponsoring provincial government, and it must be brought forward by that sponsoring province.
A number of criteria are used to assess whether a skilled trade will be included as one of the occupations to be considered for Red Seal designation--obviously, industry support, commonality of tasks, number of PTs involved, usage....
In addition, there are a number of initiatives examining the issues related to the trades. For example, the Saskatchewan apprenticeship authority has released a study on the assessment and recognition of credential and trade experience of foreign-trained workers in red seal trades, and the CCDA has recently created a task force that will review the recommendation and certainly advise the CCDA on how best to apply the framework to skilled trades.