On February 13, President Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum ordering the development of a comprehensive plan for “reciprocal” trade relations with America’s trading partners. WITA unpacked the President’s plan; what it means for trade with America’s trading partners (large and small); and what it means for the multilateral trading system the U.S. helped create with the GATT and the WTO.
WITA hosted a pop-up briefing to discuss the reciprocal tariffs proposal and the global implications.
Featured Speakers:
Mark DiPlacido, Policy Advisor, American Compass
Professor Simon J. Evenett, Professor of Geopolitics & Strategy, IMD Business School
Professor Jennifer Hillman, Co-Director, Institute of International Economic Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Ambassador John K. Veroneau, Senior Counsel, Covington
Moderator: David J. Ross, Partner, Chair of International Trade, Investment and Market Access Practice, WilmerHale
Speaker Biographies:
Mark DiPlacido is a policy advisor at American Compass specializing in issues related to trade, labor markets, financialization, and the broader economy. He previously worked at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative under Ambassador Robert Lighthizer, as deputy policy director for the DeSantis presidential campaign, and in policy and government relations roles in the U.S. Senate and at The Heritage Foundation.
Simon J Evenett is Professor of Geopolitics and Strategy at IMD. A globally recognized expert on trade, investment, and geopolitical dynamics, he is a leading analyst of the global business environment. For almost 30 years, he has guided board members, senior executives, EMBAs, and MBAs in understanding the significant shifts in the worldwide business environment and their implications for firm operations, performance, and strategy. In 2023, he was appointed Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Trade and Investment.
To offer evidence-based solutions, Evenett has developed several policy intelligence initiatives that provide real-time information on legal, policy, and regulatory developments worldwide. In partnership with the Max Schmidheiny Foundation and the University of St. Gallen, he founded the St Gallen Endowment for Prosperity Through Trade (SGEPT), which now employs around 40 professionals. The SGEPT currently hosts three leading independent commercial policy monitoring initiatives: the Global Trade Alert, a key resource for trade monitoring and assessing trade tensions, the New Industrial Policy Observatory, and the Digital Policy Alert.
Launched in 2023, Evenett created the Crux of Capitalism initiative which provides valuable insights into the performance of firms and sectors in 21 major economies. Additionally, he has served as a World Bank official twice, on the UK Competition Commission, was a Member of the Trade and the Economy Panel at the UK Department of International Trade, and has sat on several high-profile commissions relating to the future of world trade.
His research focuses on geopolitical rivalry, international trade policy, protectionism, industrial policy, business-government relations, trade negotiations and agreements, and the WTO. Evenett draws out the implications of these developments for executives, corporate strategy, and public policy. His work is cited in numerous fields, including international trade, international business, and international political economy/political science, and he has given over 650 presentations to private sector, public policy, and educational audiences.
For 30 years, Evenett’s research and practitioner engagement has lain at the intersection of corporate decision-making, public policy and diplomacy, and markets. Starting with a focus on how firms manipulate trade policy processes to gain commercial advantage, his interests broadened to include corporate diplomacy, the impact of trade agreements and the WTO, and competition law and enforcement. With the revival of protectionism during and after the global financial crisis, Evenett’s efforts pivoted again. More recently, he has focused on the resurgence of industrial policy, geopolitical rivalry, and other defining features of our time, including China-US rivalry and state support for the clean energy transition.
Evenett is the author and co-author of over 250 publications and contributes thought leadership to diverse audiences through blogs and newspaper columns. Frequently cited in global media, he has published extensively in leading academic journals including The Journal of International Business Policy, the Journal of International Economic Law, and the Journal of Political Economy. Among his most recent works is The Scramble for Raw Materials: Time to Take Stock? co-authored with Johannes Fritz, and the co-authored journal article The Return of Industrial Policy in Data.
Before joining IMD, Evenett was a Professor of International Trade and Economic Development at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, where he served as the Academic Director of the St Gallen MBA for over a decade. Previously he taught at Oxford University and held fellowships at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC. Evenett has been a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Johns Hopkins University twice and was Visiting Professor of Corporate Strategy at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business three times.
Jennifer A. Hillman is currently a professor of practice at the Georgetown University Law Center, teaching the lead courses in international business and international trade, while serving as a fellow of Georgetown’s Institute of International Economic Law (IIEL). She is also co-director of the Center for Inclusive Trade and Development and served as a panelist for the second dispute under the USMCA (updated NAFTA)–a dispute between the United States and Canada over the application of US safeguard measures to imports of solar panels. She recently published Legal Aspects of Brexit:Implications of the United Kingdom’s Decision to Withdraw from the European Union (IIEL 2017), drawn from a seminar she co-taught in the fall of 2016.She has also written extensively about international trade law and the WTO, including a 2017 IIEL Policy Brief on the WTO consistency of the Ryan-Brady “A Better Way” tax proposal, co-authoring the leading casebook on trade, International Trade Law, 3rd ed., Wolters Kluwer (2016), papers on recent WTO cases on sanitary and phytosanitary measures (World Trade Review) and “Changing Climate for Carbon Taxes” (GMFUS.org).
Hillman has had a distinguished career in public service, both nationally and internationally. In 2012, she completed her term as one of seven members from around the world serving on the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Appellate Body. Prior to that, she served for nine years as a commissioner at the United States International Trade Commission (USITC), rendering decisions in more than six hundred investigations regarding injury to U.S. industries caused by imports that were dumped or subsidized, along with making numerous decisions in cases involving alleged patent or trademark infringement. Before her appointment to the USITC, Hillman served as general counsel at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), where she had previously been an ambassador and chief textiles negotiator. She also served as legislative director and counsel to U.S. Senator Terry Sanford of North Carolina.
Hillman formerly served as a partner in the law firm of Cassidy Levy Kent, a senior transatlantic fellow for the German Marshall Fund of the United States, as president of the Trade Policy Forum and on the selection panel for the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation.She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the board of visitors at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.She is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and Duke University.
John K. Veroneau is a partner at Covington & Burling LLP, a Washington, DC-based global law firm. His practice focuses on international trade law matters, and he chairs the firm’s public policy practice group. He has served in Senate-confirmed positions in Republican and Democratic Administrations. Under President Bush, he was Deputy United States Trade Representative (USTR) and USTR General Counsel. Under President Clinton, he served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs. Mr. Veroneau was Legislative Director to former US Senator Bill Cohen, Legislative Director to former US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Chief of Staff to US Senator Susan Collins. He earned his B.A. from the University of Maine and his J.D. from the University of Maine School of Law. He and his wife Carol Svoboda have two sons.
David Ross chairs WilmerHale’s International Trade, Investment and Market Access Practice. Drawing on his experience at the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) and on Capitol Hill, Mr. Ross advises companies on the use of domestic and international trade rules to eliminate regulatory barriers and other impediments to their businesses and investments around the world, with a particular focus on the technology, services/financial services, and aviation/aerospace sectors. Mr. Ross also spends significant time on trade policy and legislative matters, including proceedings under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, US legislation, the negotiation and enforcement of international agreements, and World Trade Organization (WTO) and other international trade law. Mr. Ross joined WilmerHale after spending four years as international trade counsel to the Republican staff of the Senate Finance Committee, and eight years as associate general counsel at USTR.
During his time at USTR, Mr. Ross was responsible for legal matters involving services and financial services, subsidies, antidumping measures, and safeguards. Mr. Ross served as lead counsel for the United States in numerous dispute settlement proceedings before the WTO, including the successful US challenges to EU subsidies for large civil aircraft and Mexican antidumping duties on imports of US rice. Mr. Ross also served as the chief US lawyer in the negotiation of the free trade agreement with Chile and as the services and financial services lawyer in free trade agreement negotiations with Australia, Morocco, Bahrain and Oman.
While serving with the finance committee, Mr. Ross advised member, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and Republican staff on trade and economic issues including services, intellectual property, investment, currency/exchange rates, climate, labor, trade adjustment assistance and WTO dispute settlement. Mr. Ross provided policy guidance on trade and economic matters involving trade with China, Europe and the Russian Federation, and he negotiated and drafted trade legislation on issues falling within the finance committee’s jurisdiction. Through these experiences, Mr. Ross gained deep experience in the formulation and execution of Congressional trade policy, legislative drafting, Executive Branch oversight, and the use of legislative tools to help address and resolve impediments to trade.
From 1993–1997, Mr. Ross was an attorney-adviser in the Office of the Chief Counsel for Import Administration, US Department of Commerce. Mr. Ross provided legal advice to the Import Administration (IA) on its regulatory responsibilities under the US trade remedy laws and defended IA determinations before US courts and NAFTA panels. He also was extensively involved in the negotiation and administration of the antidumping suspension agreements on uranium and honey.