Ep. 27 – WITA’s Friday Exchange: Trade as Economic Statecraft, Greenland, Trade Bazookas, Davos Deals, and the Silicon Shield

Kate Kalutkiewicz, Senior Managing Director, leads the McLarty trade practice and contributes to the firm’s Europe practice and McLarty Inbound.Kate has managed complex challenges around global trade, industrial, and investment policy for over two decades. Her experience spans roles in government, particularly in Europe and South America, where she honed her skills in negotiating complex international agreements and navigating the nuance around public-private sector interactions.

Kate most recently served as Head of US Trade Policy for Amazon, where she advocated a broad range of international trade and economic issues with the US Government, touching several sectors, including retail, creative content production and distribution, cloud services, sustainable fleet, autos, and hardline manufacturing.

Prior to that, Kate served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for International Trade at the National Economic Council, where she developed and led US trade policy initiatives. During her White House tenure, she led interagency teams responsible for the US G7 Presidency and US positions on supply chain resiliency and support for the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before serving in the White House, Kate was the Senior Trade Representative at the US Mission to the European Union from 2016-2020. While in Brussels, she was the USTR’s primary interlocutor with the European Commission and Member State authorities responsible for trade.

Before her time in Brussels, Kate held the role of USTR’s Director for European Affairs (2011-2016) and served as Associate Chief Negotiator for the US in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations. She began her career at USTR as its Director for Brazil and the Southern Cone (2007-2011), where she was the principal agency representative for implementing and managing US trade policy in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay.

Prior to USTR, Kate was a legislative assistant in the office of Senator James Talent (R-MO), where she supported the Senator on issues related to trade, foreign policy, homeland security, immigration, and the judiciary.

Daniel Mullaney is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and GeoEconomics Center. Most recently, he served as assistant US trade representative (AUSTR) for Europe and the Middle East in the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) from 2010 to 2023. He was chief negotiator for comprehensive trade agreements with the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom, as well as trade lead for the US-EU Trade and Technology Council, and was responsible for developing and implementing US trade policy in Europe, Eurasia, Russia, the Middle East, and North Africa.

Before assuming the post of AUSTR, he served as senior trade representative in the US Mission to the European Union in Brussels, where he was the principal voice for US trade policy in interactions with the EU institutions and EU member state governments, the public, and the international press. Prior to that posting, Mullaney was in USTR’s Office of General Counsel for seven years, where he represented the United States in dispute settlement proceedings at the World Trade Organization and led negotiations and acted as legal counsel for free trade and other agreements. Before joining USTR, Mullaney was in private practice for nearly twenty years, specializing in international trade law and litigation; when he entered public service, he was a partner at the law firm of Dorsey and Whitney.

Mullaney is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio. He holds a BA from Amherst College, and a joint law/foreign service JD/MSFS degree from Georgetown University.

Sara Schuman is a Managing Director at Beacon Global Strategies, where she leads the firm’s International Trade Practice. She brings unparalleled experience and insight at the forefront of U.S.-China trade relations, having served in senior U.S. government roles for more than a decade in Washington and Beijing.

Prior to joining Beacon, Schuman was the Senior Trade Representative for China at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), where she was one of the key U.S. officials responsible for trade negotiations with China and for developing and implementing U.S. trade policy toward China, including coordinating with U.S. trading partners and allies on economic security initiatives. She also served as Minister Counselor for Trade Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing during the first Trump and Biden administrations, acting as USTR’s envoy to the People’s Republic of China and the top U.S. trade official in the country. In that role, she was deeply involved in the Phase One Agreement trade negotiations and held broad responsibility for monitoring China’s implementation of its commitments under the agreement.

During the second Trump Administration, Schuman took part in multiple rounds of high-level negotiations with China and USTR’s review of China-related trade issues under the Presidential Memorandum on America First Trade Policy. She also has extensive experience with trade enforcement, including work on several World Trade Organization disputes against China involving rare earths, raw materials, aircraft, automobiles, aluminum, intellectual property rights, subsidies, electronic payments, and agriculture, and played a leading role in USTR’s Section 301 investigation of China’s technology transfer practices during the first Trump Administration.

Throughout her government career, Schuman worked extensively with other federal agencies, including the Departments of Treasury, Commerce, State, Agriculture, Energy, and Homeland Security. She was also detailed for one year to the U.S. House of Representatives’ bipartisan Select Committee on the Strategic Competition with China, serving as senior advisor on trade and economic security to the Ranking Member.

Schuman is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and has spent more than a decade living and working in China. Before joining USTR in 2013, she practiced law with an international law firm in New York and Beijing. She holds a J.D. magna cum laude from Brooklyn Law School, a B.A. cum laude in International Politics and Economics from Middlebury College, and a certificate in China Studies from the Johns Hopkins University Nanjing Center.

Mark Linscott is a Senior Advisor with the US India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), leading efforts to advance US-India trade. He also is a Senior Advisor at The Asia Group and a Nonresident 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 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 in free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations, such as the TPP, and in 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 US Mission to the WTO in Geneva and 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 US negotiator. He 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 DC, where he tinkers on his café racer motorcycles and paddles on the Potomac.