WITA Deep Dive on WTO Reform: Resolving the Impasse over the Appellate Body

Stacy Ettinger is a partner at K&L Gates in the Washington, D.C. office and focuses her practice on international trade. Stacy advises U.S. and foreign companies operating across a diverse range of sectors including manufacturing, energy (LNG, solar, wind), infrastructure, and maritime, in various geographic regions including Asia and the Arctic. 

Her practice covers international trade, investment and regulatory matters, including trade investigations, tariff actions (232, 301, 201), customs rulings, national security reviews of foreign acquisitions and investments (CFIUS), free trade zones, bilateral and multilateral negotiations, market access issues, international IP, and food/product standards. She has over 25 years of experience working with U.S. and foreign businesses and foreign governments on international trade, regulatory, investment, and policy matters. 

Stacy joined K&L Gates after serving for over nine years as senior legal and policy advisor to Senate Democratic Leader, Charles Schumer, on trade, investment and regulatory matters. 

Prior to her work in the United States Senate, Stacy served for 15 years as a trade negotiator, legal and policy advisor, and litigator at the U.S. Department of Commerce, where she represented the United States in bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations, investigated and litigated unfair trade practices (dumping, subsidies) involving industrial and agricultural products, and managed complex federal rulemaking projects. Stacy also represented the United States in more than 30 appearances in World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement proceedings. 

Ignacio Bercerois a director at the Directorate General for Trade of the European Commission (DG TRADE). He currently oversees activities related to the US, Canada and the EU Neighbouring Countries. Bercero coordinated the work of the EU-US High Level Working Group on Growth and Jobs, which recommended the launch of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations. He now acts as the EU Chief Negotiator for this agreement.

Bercero joined the European Commission in 1987 and has thorough experience in a large number of trade-related policy areas. During the Uruguay Round of multilateral negotiations, he followed, inter alia, negotiations on trade safeguards, GATT articles, functioning of the GATT, as well as talks on trade and environment. In the period leading up to the launch of the WTO Doha Round, he served as coordinator of the EU WTO policy and led the negotiations on trade and competition. He was also posted in the EU Delegation to the United Nations in New York and worked in areas of WTO Dispute Settlement and Trade Barriers Regulation.

More recently, between 2005 and 2011, Bercero’s field of responsibility included trade-related aspects of sustainable development, as well as bilateral trade relations with South and South-East Asia, Korea, EuroMed and the Middle East countries. As the Chief Negotiator, he led the negotiating process with South Korea and India.Bercero authored several papers and publications on the subjects of Trade Laws, GATT and WTO System, Safeguard Measures, Trade and Competition, WTO Dispute Settlement Reform and bilateral dispute settlement rules in European Free Trade Agreements.

Bercero holds a Law Degree from the Faculty of Law of the Universidad Complutense, Madrid and a Masters of Laws Degree (with Distinction) from University College, London.

Bruce Hirsh, the Principal and Founder of Tailwind Global Strategies LLC, has nearly three decades of experience developing and implementing solutions to complex global problems both in the United States and internationally. With the benefit of 18 years in leadership positions in the Executive Branch and Congress, he understands how to work at the nexus of policy, process, and personalities to advance solutions and achieve results for businesses seeking to expand their footprint in key markets and achieve their policy priorities.

In a sensitive and unpredictable period for companies who trade internationally, Tailwind provides reliable interpretations of the latest developments and their consequences for clients’ bottom lines, and advises clients on how best to minimize risk and maximize business opportunities. In doing so, Tailwind draws on Mr. Hirsh’s deep knowledge of substantive trade and regulatory issues, as well as U.S. and international policy-making institutions. Over the course of his government career, Bruce developed U.S. government positions, initiatives and legislation on a variety of topics and built broad-based coalitions in the WTO, APEC and elsewhere to advance initiatives internationally.

Prior to establishing Tailwind, Bruce worked as Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Japan, Korea, and APEC, where he negotiated Japan-related provisions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement and represented the United States at Senior Official meetings under APEC and the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement. He also developed and successfully executed strategies for addressing market access and regulatory hurdles in collaboration with private sector stakeholders. As Deputy Assistant USTR for WTO and Multilateral Affairs, he was lead U.S. negotiator for WTO Trade Facilitation, helping to set up the successful conclusion of the first multilateral WTO agreement in two decades, the Trade Facilitation Agreement.

From 2011 to 2014, Bruce was Chief International Trade Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, where he was Chairman Max Baucus’s principal advisor on international trade and economic matters and advised Members of the Committee and the Democratic Caucus on these issues. In that role, he negotiated the Baucus-Camp trade promotion authority legislation.

Bruce also served at USTR as Chief Counsel for Dispute Settlement and as Legal Advisor to the U.S. Mission to the WTO in Geneva, Switzerland. Before joining USTR in 1998, he practiced law in Washington, DC and Tokyo, Japan.

Ambassador Rufus Yerxa became President of the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) in May 2016. As president, he oversees NFTC’s efforts in favor of a more open, rules-based world economy, focusing on key issues to U.S. competitiveness such as international trade and tax policy, economic sanctions and export finance.

He has more than four decades of experience as a lawyer, diplomat, U.S. trade negotiator and international official. He has been in key policymaking and management roles in Congress, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), and also spent several years in private law practice and the corporate world. As Deputy Director General of the WTO from 2002 to 2013 he helped to broaden its membership and strengthen its role as the principal rules-based institution governing world trade.

Prior to this, from 1989 to 1995, he served as Deputy USTR under both a Republican and a Democratic President, first as the Geneva-based Ambassador to the GATT (the predecessor organization to the WTO) and subsequently as the Washington Deputy. Earlier in his government career (1981 to 1989) he was with the Committee on Ways and Means of the U.S. House of Representatives, where he was Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Trade. He began his government career as a legal advisor with the U.S. International Trade Commission. After leaving government service in 1995 and prior to joining the WTO he spent five years in the private sector, including as the Brussels-based partner with the U.S. law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. Rufusis a native of Washington State.

He holds a BA in political science from the University of Washington (1973), a JD from Seattle University School of Law (1976) and an LLB in international Law from the University of Cambridge in England (1977). He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar, and is also a Visiting Professor with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS).

Jennifer A. Hillman is a senior fellow for trade and international political economy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), specializing in U.S. trade policy, the law and politics of the World Trade Organization (WTO), international organizations, and Brexit.   

Hillman was most recently a professor of practice at the Georgetown University Law Center, teaching the lead courses in international business and international trade, along with a practicum on international trade and investment law that gave students the opportunity to resolve real-world problems for developing country governments and a wide variety of NGOs. She recently published Getting to Brexit: Legal Aspects of the Process of the UK’s Withdrawal from the EU (IIEL 2018) and Legal Aspects of Brexit: Implications of the United Kingdom’s Decision to Withdraw from the European Union (IIEL 2017). She also co-authored the leading casebook on trade, International Trade Law, 3^rd ed., Wolters Kluwer (2016). Additional writings have covered climate change, carbon taxes, the trade war with China, and reforms to the WTO.

Hillman has had a distinguished career in public service. In 2012, she completed her term as one of seven members serving on the WTO’s highest court, its Appellate Body. Hillman also has in-depth experience adjudicating antidumping, countervailing duty, patent and safeguards cases along with conducting numerous studies of the economics of trade policy and trade agreements as a result of her service as a Commissioner at the United States International Trade Commission. Through her work as the General Counsel at the Office of the United States Trade Representative, Hillman was involved in all litigation matters in which the United States was a party or third party in disputes before panels of the NAFTA or the WTO and in addressing the intersection between trade policy, trade law, and foreign policy. She negotiated bilateral agreements with forty-five countries while serving as USTR’s Ambassador and Chief Textiles Negotiator and was the legislative director and counsel to U.S. Senator Terry Sanford of North Carolina before joining USTR.

Hillman was a partner in the law firm of Cassidy Levy Kent, a senior transatlantic fellow for the German Marshall Fund of the United States, president of the Trade Policy Forum, and a member of the selection panel for the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation. She 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.