Session 18: Prospects for U.S. and Regional Trade Negotiations
While globalization offers huge potential benefits for the world economy, the rules under which international trade is conducted are a critical and contentious issue. This session highlights some of the most pressing international trade issues facing the U.S. economy at present. Will the Doha Round of the WTO negotiations overcome the obstacles posed by agricultural subsidies in Europe and the U.S.? Does Asian manufacturing represent a mortal threat to U.S. factory workers that will lead to protectionist pressures?
Sponsor: Manufacturing Roundtable
Presentations
Links of Interest
Speakers
Stuart Mackintosh
Group of 30
Stuart P. M. Mackintosh is the Executive Director of the Group of Thirty (G30). The G30 is a nonprofit, an international body composed of very senior representatives of the private and public sectors and academia. It aims to deepen understanding of international economic and financial issues, to explore the international repercussions of decisions taken in the public and private sectors, and to examine the choices available to market practitioners and policymakers. Mr. Mackintosh oversees all aspects of the G30 annual work program, its development and fundraising.
Previously Mr. Mackintosh was a Washington-based economist and country risk manager for Mitsubishi International Corporation. In that role he initiated a weekly U.S. economic forecast and commentary for senior executives. Other responsibilities included conducting country risk analyses of Central Asian states and Russia. Before locating to the U.S., Mr. Mackintosh was Chief of Staff and principal speechwriter for leading politicians in the European Parliament.
Mr. Mackintosh is Chairman of the Board of the National Economists Club, a 500 member chapter of the National Association for Business Economics. He is a Director of International Roundtable of NABE. Mr. Mackintosh has as B.A. from University of Newcastle upon Tyne and a M.Sc. from the University of Edinburgh.
Geza Feketekuty
Monterey Institute of International Studies
Prof. Feketekuty comes to the Monterey Institute with a lifetime career in trade policy and negotiation, having served as a Senior Staff Economist with the Council of Economic Advisors and a budget examiner at the Office of Management and Budget. He taught at Princeton, Cornell and John Hopkins universities.
He came to the Monterey Institute from the Office of the United States Trade Representative, where he provided intellectual leadership in the formulation of US trade policy for over 20 years, and reached the rank of Senior Assistant US Trade Representative. He played key roles in both the Tokyo and Uruguay Rounds of Multilateral Trade Negotiations, and as Chairman of the OECD Trade Committee in the early 1990's he helped to shape the international agenda for future negotiations in the WTO.
His book, International Trade in Services: A Blue Print for Negotiation played a major role in the negotiation of the General Agreement on Trade in Services. Many of his articles on trade policy topics have had a major influence on the development of the global trade agenda over more than two decades.
He is the founder of the graduate program in commercial diplomacy at the Monterey Institute, and is currently helping a number of developing countries to develop similar programs.
He consults on trade policy issues and provides short training courses on commercial diplomacy skills for a number of US government agencies, international organizations and the World Bank and foreign governments. He also runs a nonprofit organization, the International Commercial Diplomacy Project, devoted to the development of training materials in commercial diplomacy.
John Odell
University of Southern California
John Odell completed a Ph.D. in political science in 1976 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was a member of Harvard University’s faculty from 1976 through 1982. Since 1982 he has taught and written at the University of Southern California, where he is Professor of International Relations today. From 1989 to 1992, Odell directed USC’s Center for International Studies. From 1992 through 1996 he served as Editor of International Organization, regarded by many as the leading scholarly journal of international relations in the world.
His research and teaching have concentrated on the governance of the world economy--why governments and international organizations do what they do in international economic relations. He has conducted field research in Europe, Asia, and Latin America as well as the United States, in order to learn directly from the diplomats he writes about. He has spent a year working as a visiting fellow in the office of the US Trade Representative, the top US trade negotiator. Six institutions have awarded him grants or fellowships, and institutions in many countries have invited him to lecture.
He has written extensively about negotiations among states on issues such as trade, exchange rates and debt. In 2000 he published Negotiating the World Economy and in 2006, Negotiating Trade: Developing Countries in the WTO and NAFTA. His most recent research has concentrated on negotiations in the World Trade Organization, which takes him to Geneva frequently. He also manages a virtual network of researchers writing about the process of international economic negotiation, found at www.usc.edu/enn. He has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the U.S. Department of State, the Ford Foundation, the Asia Foundation, and the Council of the Americas. In Mexico he helped train diplomats for effective economic negotiation. Personal Web site: www-rcf.usc.edu/~odell.
David A. Walters
Office of the United State Trade Representative
David A. Walters is the chief economist at USTR responsible for economic analysis related to trade negotiations. His office assists USTR negotiators in analyzing the economic impact of pending trade agreements, and prepares numerous reports examining the benefits of trade and economic growth.
Mr. Walters has nearly two decades of experience as an economist specializing in trade issues. During that time the increasing number of trade agreements and growth of the global economy has created a greater demand for economic analysis. Mr. Walters prepares numerous reports that assist U.S. negotiators in assessing the impact of trade.
“I believe we’re building a system in which prosperity will grow. We’re doing something to benefit Americans directly through increased prosperity, and indirectly by helping to assure a more peaceful world,” he says.
Before joining USTR, Mr. Walters worked at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. and the American Paper Institute in New York. Mr. Walters holds degrees from Brown University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, where he taught economics.
A native of Providence, R.I., Mr. Walters is a Vietnam-era Army veteran.
