The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is an agency of the United States federal government responsible for developing and promoting American trade policy. Part of the Executive Office of the President, it is headed by the U.S. Trade Representative, a Cabinet-level position that serves as the U.S. President's primary advisor, negotiator, and spokesperson on trade matters. USTR has more than two hundred employees, with offices in Geneva, Switzerland, and Brussels, Belgium.
The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) is a graduate school of Johns Hopkins University based in Washington, D.C., United States, with campuses in Bologna, Italy, and Nanjing, China. It is consistently ranked one of the top graduate schools for international relations in the world. The school is devoted to the study of international relations, diplomacy, national security, economics, and public policy. The school has hosted world leaders on a regular basis for public debate in international affairs.
Carla Anderson Hills is an American lawyer and a public figure. A member of the Republican Party, she previously served as the 5th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Gerald Ford from 1975 to 1977 and as the 10th United States Trade Representative under President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993. Hills was the first woman to hold each of those posts and the third female ever to serve in a presidential cabinet.
Robert Bruce Zoellick is an American public official and lawyer who was the eleventh president of the World Bank, a position he held from July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2012. He was previously a managing director of Goldman Sachs, United States Deputy Secretary of State and U.S. Trade Representative, from February 7, 2001 until February 22, 2005. Zoellick has been a senior fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs since ending his term with the World Bank. He is currently a Senior Counselor at Brunswick Group.
Marcos Troyjo is President of the New Development Bank (NDB). He was unanimously elected to lead the multilateral development bank for a five-year mandate (2020-2025) by the NDB's Board of Governors on May 27, 2020.
Kevin G. Nealer is a principal and partner in The Scowcroft Group, specializing in financial services, risk analysis, direct investment and trade policy.
The School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University (SIPA) is the international affairs and public policy school of Columbia University, a private Ivy League university located in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, New York City.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), or Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, was a highly contested proposed trade agreement between 12 Pacific Rim economies, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States. The proposal was signed on 4 February 2016 but not ratified, being opposed by many Democrats and Republicans, including both major-party presidential nominees, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. After taking office, the newly elected President Donald Trump formally withdrew the United States from TPP in January 2017, therefore the TPP could not be ratified as required and did not enter into force. The remaining countries negotiated a new trade agreement called Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, which incorporates most of the provisions of the TPP and which entered into force on 30 December 2018.
The School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) at the University of California San Diego, formerly the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS), is devoted to the study of international affairs, economics, and policy education. Until 2015, it stood as the only professional school of international affairs that was exclusively focused on Asia and the Americas.
Rufus Hawkins Yerxa is an American lawyer and former U.S. government and international official. He is currently a Senior Advisor with the global consulting firm McClarty Associates. He served as Deputy United States Trade Representative during the George H.W. Bush and Clinton Administrations, and served for 11 years as Deputy Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO). From 2016 to 2021 he was President of the National Foreign Trade Council.
Gerald L. Curtis is an American academic, a political scientist interested in comparative politics, Japanese politics, and U.S.-Japan relations.
Mary McInnis Boies is an American attorney working as counsel to Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, where she specializes in antitrust and corporate commercial litigation. Mrs. Boies was a founding partner of the American law firm Boies & McInnis LLP. The law firm, established in 1988, specialized in antitrust and corporate commercial litigation.
The Summer Palace Dialogue (SPD) is an economic forum which brings together economists from both China and the United States to discuss economic cooperation between the two largest economies in the world. SPD is co-hosted by Chinese Economists 50 Forum and the Columbia Global Centers East Asia, and was formerly co-hosted by the Brookings Institution. It was founded in 2009 by former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and current Chairman of AEA Investors Admiral Bill Owens and Vice Minister Liu He of the Chinese Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs. The forum extends for two days. Participants spend the first day in private discussions and then convene a half-day public session to summarize their observations, analyses, and conclusions with the press and a broader audience. The Summer Palace Dialogue is scheduled annually in mid-September in Beijing, right before the Summer World Economic Forum in Dalian. The third annual Summer Palace Dialogue was held on September 12–13, 2011.
Miriam Elizabeth Sapiro served as the Deputy Trade Representative under Ron Kirk and became the acting Trade Representative on May 23, 2013. A former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Sapiro served as well in the State Department and on the National Security Council under Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton.
María Aránzazu "Arancha" González Laya is a Spanish lawyer who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation in the Spanish government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez from 2020 to 2021. Currently, González is the dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at the elite French university Sciences Po.
Karan Krishna Bhatia is an American attorney and former senior official in the Bush administration. He currently leads public policy and government relations for Google. He served as the deputy U.S. Trade Representative from 2005 to 2007, credited with leading the negotiation of the United States–Korea Free Trade Agreement. Additional appointments include Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Aviation and International Affairs where he served from 2003 to 2005 and deputy under secretary of commerce for industry and security from 2001 to 2003. He served a total of six years in the Bush Administration before returning to the private sector in 2008 to lead government affairs for General Electric.
Arie Reich is an Israeli legal scholar specializing in international trade law and European Union Law. He is a full professor at the Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law, and serves as the Vice Rector of the university. He previously served as the Dean of the Faculty of Law and Dean of students.
Sue Mi Terry is a former CIA officer, researcher, and Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. A former intelligence analyst specializing in East Asia, Terry is regularly quoted in print and web media as an expert on international politics involving North Korea, South Korea and Japan.
Jason Eric Bordoff is an American energy policy expert, and a researcher specializing in the intersection of economics, energy, environment, and national security. In April 2021, he was named a Co-Founding Dean of the Columbia Climate School. Since 2013 he has served as the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, where he is also a professor of professional practice. From 2009 to 2013 he served in senior roles in the Obama administration on the Council on Environmental Quality, the National Economic Council, and the National Security Council.
Thomas J. Christensen is an American political scientist. He is the James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University.
