Government Negotiating Experience
Many Sidley lawyers are former government officials and trade negotiators. Lawyers in the International Trade Policy group include:
- A former USTR General Counsel and Assistant USTR for Services, Investment and Intellectual Property
- The lead Canadian negotiator of NAFTA and the WTO Financial Services and Telecom agreements
- A former Deputy Foreign Minister of Bulgaria, who negotiated numerous bilateral investment treaties and Bulgaria's WTO and EU accessions
- A former Director General of the Andean Community, Director of the Colombian Trade Bureau and Minister Counselor of the Colombian Embassy
- The lead U.S. negotiator of the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Understanding and the Information Technology Agreement
- A former Counselor of the Permanent Mission of Costa Rica to the WTO
- A former Senior Counsel for Textiles and Trade Agreements at the U.S. Department of Commerce, and a primary U.S. Government negotiator of the 1986 Protocol extending the Multifiber Arrangement
- A former USTR Senior Counsel for Dispute Settlement and head of enforcement, and former GATT Secretariat legal officer for the Uruguay Round negotiations on safeguards, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, subsidies, textiles, services, agriculture, and the Dispute Settlement Understanding
- Two former U.S. Patent and Trademark Office negotiators of World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties
- A former official with the European Commission responsible for negotiating and providing legal advice on multiple EC trade agreements
WTO Negotiations Sidley has decades-long experience negotiating WTO and GATT agreements. Our lawyers include the lead national negotiators for issues arising in the Tokyo Round, Uruguay Round, and Doha Round of negotiations.
Free Trade Agreements Sidley lawyers include the lead Canadian negotiator for NAFTA and the lead U.S. negotiator for the services, investment, and intellectual property chapters of most recent U.S. free trade agreements. In their former government capacities, Sidley lawyers have been involved in the negotiations and/or implementation of most completed or pending U.S. free trade agreements, including CAFTA, the Free Trade Area of the Americas and the free trade agreements with Australia, Morocco, Chile, Singapore, Bahrain, Oman, Panama, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates.
Bilateral Investment Treaties Sidley lawyers include lead negotiators for bilateral investment treaties with Germany, France, UK, the Netherlands, Kuwait, China and others. Sidley's team also includes the chief legal advisor in the development of the U.S. government's current Model Bilateral Investment Treaty.
Other Sidley lawyers include the former lead negotiator of the 2006 U.S.-Canada Softwood Lumber Agreement, one of the primary negotiators with respect to intellectual property rights issues under the U.S.-China Joint Committee on Commerce and Trade, the lead EU counsel for the negotiation of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (on transboundary movement of genetically modified organisms and GMO foods), the European Commission’s legal counsel on its Communication on the "precautionary principle," and U.S. and EU negotiators and legal counsel dealing with specific market access issues related to Japan.
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