Speaker biographies

Claude Barfield is a resident scholar at AEI. He is the author or editor of a number of books on trade and science policy, including Free Trade, Sovereignty, Democracy: The Future of the World Trade Organization (AEI Press, 2001). In 1999, he coauthored Tiger by the Tail: China and the World Trade Organization (AEI Press) with Mark Groombridge. Mr. Barfield is working with Andrei Zlate on the forthcoming AEI Press book The Eagle and the Dragon: The United States, China, and the Rise of Asian Regionalism. Before coming to AEI, he served in the Gerald R. Ford administration, on the staff of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, and as a co–staff director of the President’s Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties.

Sallie James is a policy analyst with Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies. Ms. James writes and speaks on a variety of trade topics with an emphasis on agricultural trade policy. Before joining Cato in 2006, Ms. James was an executive officer in the Office of Trade Negotiations in the Australian government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Previously, she was a senior policy adviser in the Australian government's Department of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forestry. She has held numerous research and teaching assistant positions, and her articles have been published in the Washington Times, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, and the European Review of Agricultural Economics. Ms. James has appeared on BBC World, CNBC, and Australian ABC's Behind the News.

Thea Lee is policy director for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), where she oversees research on international trade and investment policy. Previously, she worked as an international trade economist at the Economic Policy Institute and as an editor at Dollars & Sense. Ms. Lee is coauthor of A Field Guide to the Global Economy (New Press, 2000) and she has written reports on the North American Free Trade Agreement and the impact of international trade on the domestic steel and textile industries. Ms. Lee has testified before several committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate on various trade topics. She has also appeared on numerous radio programs, and on the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, C-Span, and CNN.

Philip I. Levy studies international trade and development at AEI. Before joining AEI, he handled international economic issues as a member of the secretary of state’s policy planning staff (2005–2006), was senior economist for trade on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (2003–2005), and was a faculty member in Yale University’s department of economics (1994–2003). An economist by training, he has experience in many international trade and development policy issues, including free trade agreements, trade with China, antidumping policy, welfare effects of globalization, U.S. foreign assistance policy, and economic development policy.

Ira S. Shapiro is a partner at Greenberg Traurig LLP, where he advises clients on the impact of multilateral, regional, and bilateral international trade rules and on the barriers to exports in foreign markets around the world. During the Clinton administration, he was general counsel to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and he played a key role in completing the negotiations on both the Uruguay Round, which established the World Trade Organization’s global trade rules, and the North American Free Trade Agreement. As the chief U.S. trade negotiator with Japan and Canada, Mr. Shapiro negotiated solutions to several of the most contentious bilateral trade disputes, helping to open the Japanese market to U.S. automobiles and auto parts, semiconductors, and insurance. He spent twelve years in senior staff positions in the U.S. Senate, including minority staff director and chief counsel of the Governmental Affairs Committee and chief of staff to Senator John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.). Mr. Shapiro has also served as a consultant to the Inter-American Development Bank.

Bruce Stokes covers international economics for the National Journal. He has received numerous awards for his writing, including the John Hancock Award for excellence in business and economics reporting. Mr. Stokes is the coauthor of America Against the World with Andrew Kohut (Macmillan, 2007) and author of A New Beginning: Recasting the U.S.-Japan Economic Relationship (Council on Foreign Relations, 2000). A former senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Mr. Stokes is currently a journalism fellow at the German Marshall Fund and a consultant to the Pew Research Center. In 2004, he was chosen by International Economy magazine as one of the most influential China watchers in the American press.

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