Ep. 7 – WITA’s Friday Exchange: Breaking Down the Legal Cases Against the Trump Tariffs

Peter E. Harrell is a Visiting Scholar at Georgetown’s Institute of International Economic Law. Harrell has had a diverse career across both the public and private sectors and currently serves as an attorney advising companies and investors on international legal, regulatory, and geopolitical risks, including economic sanctions and trade compliance matters. As a Visiting Scholar, Harrell’s research agenda focuses on the future of U.S. trade law and policy and the global trading order.

From January 2021 through 2022, Harrell served at the White House as Senior Director for International Economics, jointly appointed to the National Security Council and the National Economic Council. In that role, Harrell led White House initiatives to secure U.S. supply chains for critical products, worked on international digital and telecommunications policy and negotiations, served as the White House representative to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, and led policy processes to impose sanctions and export controls on Russia in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

From 2015 to early 2021, Harrell was an attorney in private practice and served as Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Harrell’s articles and essays have appeared in publications including the Fordham International Law Journal, the Journal of International Economic Law, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Politico, and Lawfare, among other outlets. Harrell has also testified in front of multiple congressional committees. He is also the host of a podcast, Security Economics.

Between 2009 and 2014, Harrell served at the U.S. State Department, first on the Policy Planning Staff and subsequently in the Department’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs. Earlier in his career, Harrell served on President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and as a reporter for Congressional Quarterly.

In addition to serving as a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of International Economic Law, Harrell is also a nonresident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Harrell is a magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University and holds a JD from Yale Law School.

Professor Lederman was Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2009 to 2010, and an Attorney Advisor in OLC from 1994-2002. From 1988 to 2004, he was an attorney at Bredhoff & Kaiser, where his practice consisted principally of federal litigation, including appeals, on behalf of labor unions, employees and pension funds. In 2008, with David Barron, he published a two-part article in the Harvard Law Review examining Congress’s authority to regulate the Commander in Chief’s conduct of war.

Prior to rejoining the Department of Justice, he was a regular contributor to several blogs and web sites, including Balkinization, SCOTUSblog, Opinio Juris, and Slate, writing principally on issues relating to separation of powers, war powers, torture, detention, interrogation, international law, treaties, executive branch lawyering, statutory interpretation and the First Amendment. He served as law clerk to Chief Judge Jack B. Weinstein on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, and to Judge Frank M. Coffin on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.