WITA Webinar Featuring:
Nigel Cory, Associate Director, Trade Policy, Information Technology, and Innovation Foundation
Mark Linscott, Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council/Senior Advisor, The Asia Group and former Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for WTO and Multilateral Affairs
Terence Stewart, former Managing Partner, Law Offices of Stewart and Stewart, and author of the blog, Current Thoughts on Trade
Moderator: Wendy Cutler, Vice President, and Managing Director, Washington D.C. office of the Asia Society Policy Institute
Nigel Cory is an associate director covering trade policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. He focuses on cross-border data flows, data governance, intellectual property, and how they each relate to digital trade and the broader digital economy. Cory has provided in-person testimony and written submissions and has published reports and op-eds relating to these issues in the United States, the European Union, Australia, China, India, and New Zealand, among other countries and regions, and he has completed research projects for international bodies such as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation and the World Trade Organization.
Cory previously worked as a researcher in the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Prior to that, he worked for eight years in Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which included positions working on G20 global economic and trade issues and the Doha Development Round. Cory also had diplomatic postings in Malaysia, where he worked on bilateral and regional trade, economic, and security issues, and in Afghanistan, where he was the deputy director of a joint U.S.-Australia provincial reconstruction team. Cory holds a master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University and a bachelor’s degree in international business and commerce from Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia.
Mark Linscott is a Senior Advisor with The Asia Group, where he works closely with clients on trade and investment priorities across South Asia. He also serves as a Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.
Previously, Mark was the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) for South and Central Asian Affairs from December 2016 to December 2018. He was the U.S. government lead in developing trade policy with the countries in South and Central Asia and led efforts in the bilateral Trade Policy Forum with India and in Trade and Investment Framework Agreements (TIFAs) with Central Asia, Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
Mark served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for World Trade Organization (WTO) and Multilateral Affairs from 2012 to 2016 with responsibility for coordinating U.S. trade policies in the WTO. He and his team were responsible for negotiation and implementation of WTO accessions and the Trade Facilitation Agreement and regionally managed negotiations in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) on customs matters, government procurement, subsidies and trade remedies, and technical barriers to trade. Mark also represented the United States in trade meetings of the Group of Twenty (G-20) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Mark was the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Environment and Natural Resources from October 2003 to March 2012. In this capacity, he oversaw all trade and environment issues for USTR, including related free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations, such as the TPP, and the WTO and OECD. During this period, he developed a robust agenda on illegal logging and associated trade through Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and bilateral agreements with Indonesia and China.
From 1996 to 2002, Mark represented the United States at the U.S. Mission to the WTO in Geneva, covering trade in services, customs, antidumping, subsidies, and government procurement. He was a founding member of the WTO Pension Fund Management Board. Prior to serving in Geneva, he worked in the Office of WTO and Multilateral Affairs in USTR Washington, where he concluded the Uruguay Round Government Procurement Agreement as the lead U.S. negotiator and was responsible for preparations for the entry-into-force of the WTO.
Mark started his career at the Department of Commerce, serving from 1985 to 1988 in Import Administration, and from 1988 to 1992 in the Office of Multilateral Affairs. He was awarded a Gold Medal Award, the Commerce Department’s highest honor, for his work on the 1986 Canadian softwood lumber investigation.
Mark holds a BA in economics from the University of Virginia and a JD from Georgetown University Law Center. He and his wife, Karen, live in Washington D.C., where he tinkers on his café racer and bicycles and paddles on the Potomac.
Terence Stewart now retired, was the managing partner of the Law Offices of Stewart and Stewart from 1986-August 2019. Mr. Stewart has a BA from the College of the Holy Cross, an MBA from Harvard University, and an LLM from Georgetown University Law School. He was an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law from 1995-2012 teaching courses on the GATT and the WTO. Mr. Stewart’s practice focused on international trade, notably trade remedies, WTO and FTA negotiations, and dispute settlement. Among his publications (editor and/or author) is The GATT Uruguay Round: A Negotiating History (1986-1992)(Vols. I-III); The End Game (Part I)(Vol. IV); Opportunities and Obligations: New Perspectives on Global and U.S. Trade Policy, dozens of articles and posts on various WTO, FTA and trade remedy issues. He has been a frequent speaker on WTO matters including on the future of the WTO dispute settlement system
Mr. Stewart is a former President of the Federal Circuit Bar Association. He has served as President of the Customs and International Trade Bar Association, been a member of the U.S Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuits’s Advisory Council as well as a past Chairman of the U.S Court of International Trade Rule Committee. He also received an honorary Doctorate from the Ukranian Academy of Foreign Trade and an honorary Doctorate of political science from the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2009 he was awarded the Order of Merit of the 3rd Degree by the government of Ukraine.
Wendy Cutler joined the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) as vice president in November 2015. She also serves as the managing director of the Washington D.C. Office. In these roles, she focuses on building ASPI’s presence in Washington — strengthening its outreach as a think/do tank — and on leading initiatives that address challenges related to trade and investment, as well as women’s empowerment in Asia. She joined ASPI following an illustrious career of nearly three decades as a diplomat and negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR).
Most recently she served as Acting Deputy U.S. Trade Representative, working on a range of U.S. trade negotiations and initiatives in the Asia-Pacific region. In that capacity, she was responsible for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, including the bilateral negotiations with Japan. She also was the chief negotiator to the U.S.-Korea (Korus) Free Trade Agreement.
Cutler received her master’s degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and her bachelor’s degree from the George Washington University.