McLarty’s trade practice, founded over twenty-three years ago by Senior Counselor Kellie Meiman Hock, has helped companies to pursue international trade and investment opportunities and troubleshoot market access barriers for over two decades. In partnership with our clients, we have navigated the rapid expansion of free trade agreements as well as the current backlash against globalization and pivot to industrial policy, long popular in key global markets through local content requirements and subsidies.

Kate Kalutkiewicz, who previously served as Special Assistant to the President for Trade and Economic Policy and as a USTR trade negotiator, including four years at the US mission to the European Union in Brussels, leads McLarty’s trade practice, having spent nearly two decades negotiating complex international agreements, notably in Europe and South America. Most recently she led US trade policy for a leading US technology company, working to advance its interests in trade, tech, and industrial policy. She proactively develops and implements strategies designed to help companies to achieve their trade and investment policy goals – both globally and in Washington.

Our trade team includes two former Deputy USTRs, Rufus Yerxa and Wendy Cutler. Amb. Yerxa is a leader in transatlantic trade circles, having served for more than a decade as Deputy Director General of the WTO as well as as Staff Director of the US House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Trade. Together with McLarty founder and Chair Thomas F. McLarty, III, and then-US Ambassador to Mexico John D. Negroponte, Amb. Yerxa was a key architect of the North America Free Trade Agreement and worked on its renegotiation as President of the National Foreign Trade Council. During her nearly three-decade career at USTR, Cutler led on a range of US-Asia trade negotiations, including China trade initiatives and Japan sectoral talks. She was the lead negotiator of the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement, as well as Deputy USTR during the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks.

In concert with McLarty’s world class regional teams – from China to South Asia, from Brussels to Latin America – our trade team can help companies to confront market complexity to preserve existing market access or to unlock first-mover advantage.