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Featuring
Stacy J. Ettinger, K&L Gates LLP
Hon. F. Scott Kieff, U.S. International Trade Commission
International Tax and Competitiveness:
This session will provide an overview of the international tax regime, efforts to reform the tax treatment of foreign earnings and investment, and the implications of these policies on the competitiveness of US firms.
Featuring
James Gould, Ogilvy Government Relations
Catherine Schultz, National Foreign Trade Council
Digital Trade:
The Internet and the digital economy is changing the way firms large and small do business in the 21st Century. This session will highlight new technologies and how trade policies can be adapted to 21st Century business.
Featuring
Christine Bliss, Coalition of Services Industries
Stephen Ezell, Global Innovation Policy, The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
Views on Trade from Around the World:
This session will take us on a tour around the globe, looking at the future of trade in Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
Featuring
David Brightling, Embassy of Australia
Rodrigo A. Contreras, Embassy of Chile
Damien Levie, Delegation of the European Union to the United States of America
Katrin Kuhlmann, New Markets Lab
Special Keynote Address: Ann Linde, Sweden’s Minster of Trade
Rodrigo Andres Contreras is the Head of the Economic Department at the Embassy of Chile in Washington, D.C., and a Trade Commissioner for ProChile. During his career, he has approached trade policies and regulations from different perspectives: as a law professor, an international negotiator in bilateral and multilateral fora, a delegate in international organizations, a legal counsel and advisor of the Government of Chile, a consultant at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and, currently, as the trade and economic commissioner of Chile in the United States. In his current position, he represents the economic interest of Chile in the United States, including negotiations of international agreements, monitoring domestic regulations and representing before the U.S. Government and U.S. companies Chilean measures that may affect trade and capital flows between both countries. Mr. Contreras holds a law degree from Universidad de Valparaiso in Chile and an LL.M. from Georgetown University.
Katrin Kuhlmann is the President and Founder of the New Markets Lab, a non-profit law and development center. She is also a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, and she serves as a member of the Trade Advisory Committee on Africa of the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). Her areas of focus include trade and development, economic law and regulation, entrepreneurship, regional trade, and international legal and regulatory reform. She is published widely and frequently speaks on these topics, and she has testified before Congress on several occasions. Ms. Kuhlmann is a Senior Associate with the Global Food Security Project of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and a member of the Advisory Boards of the Law and International Development Society (LIDS) at Harvard and Georgetown Law Schools, the Bretton Woods Committee, the Trade Policy Forum, and the Trade, Finance, and Development Experts Group of the E15 Initiative led by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development and the World Economic Forum. She serves on the boards of Listening for America, the Washington International Trade Association, and Malaika Foundation. Ms. Kuhlmann was previously a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School and a Senior Advisor at the Corporate Council on Africa. Earlier in her career, she was a trade negotiator at USTR and practiced international law at Skadden Arps and Dewey Ballantime. Before founding the New Markets Lab, she held leadership positions in several non-profit organizations and think tanks, including as a Senior Fellow and Director at the Aspen Institute, and a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund. She holds degrees from Harvard Law School and Creighton University and was the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship to study international economics.
Damien Levie heads the Trade and Agriculture Section of the European Union Delegation in Washington, DC. Before coming to Washington, he was a member of the Cabinet (personal office) of EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht from 2009 to 2012. He subsequently headed the USA and Canada team of the Directorate General for Trade at the European Commission. During that period, he contributed to the pursuit of an ambitious EU trade policy agenda with the Americas, in particular the launch of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations between the U.S. and the EU, for which he was deputy chief negotiator. He also advised Karel De Gucht on a variety of trade policy issues including the new investment protection competence of the EU, intellectual property rights and services. Damien joined the European Commission in 2001, working on issues including merger control policy and REACH, the EU’s basic chemical regulation. From 2005 to 2009, he served in the Cabinet of Louis Michel, EU Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid. During that period, he worked on economic development policy in Africa as well as European economic integration issues. He also participated in the works of the UN Commission for the Legal Empowerment of the Poor co-chaired by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Hernando de Soto. Damien Levie has law degrees from KU Leuven and the University of Chicago Law School and an economics degree from UC Louvain. He was a lawyer at a major US law firm in Brussels and New York from 1994 to 2001.