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 Steven Schrage holds the Scholl Chair in International Business at CSIS. His experience spans senior positions with the U.S. State Department, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the G-8, major presidential campaigns, and key roles for congressional committees and senior leadership. He has also worked on international business issues in several private-sector positions, including at several major international law firms.
Mr. Schrage formerly served as deputy assistant secretary of state and acting assistant secretary under Colin Powell. During that time, he was selected by the White House and the State Department to lead major multilateral efforts among the United States' top allies in the G-8 as the cochair of the G-8’s Anti-Crime and Terrorism Group. While at the State Department, he managed more than $2 billion in global assistance funding for projects including critical civilian security efforts in Iraq, Latin America, Asia, Europe, Africa, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, where he led efforts that trained more than 27,000 police officers and helped secure Afghanistan’s historic election of President Hamid Karzai. Previously, Mr. Schrage served in the White House office of the U.S. trade representative (USTR). He was the first senior official placed in the USTR in 2001, and later served under USTR Robert Zoellick. Additionally, Mr. Schrage was international trade counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee (which initiates all U.S. trade legislation) and chief foreign policy counsel for the third-ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has also held positions with both House and Senate leadership members. Most recently, Mr. Schrage served as foreign policy and trade director for the 2008 presidential campaign of former Massachusetts governor and Bain Capital founder Mitt Romney. Mr. Schrage is an honors graduate of Duke University and the University of Michigan Law School, and conducted MBA and doctoral studies at Harvard Business School, where he earned distinction (honors) for his doctoral work prior to his return to public service in 2000.
Ed Gresser is a Senior Fellow and Director of the DLC's Project on Trade and Global Markets. Joining the DLC in 2009 after eight years at the Progressive Policy Institute, he oversees the DLC's research and policy development on trade and global-economy and issues.
Gresser's major research focuses, at the DLC and earlier at PPI, include economic relations between the west and the Muslim world; East Asian integration and American trade relations with China; and the U.S. tariff system and its effects on low-income American shoppers and development prospects in poor countries, along with many other issues. Mr. Gresser also created the widely praised "Trade Fact of the Week" electronic information service, which covers issues from the revival of high-seas piracy to robot use around the world, Ethiopia's leading role in birdseed trade, shoe tariffs and international adoption. His research has been cited by leaders of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the IMF and other institutions, and covered by major publications and news outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Far Eastern Economic Review, and others.His first book, Freedom From Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy, was published in November 2007.
Before joining PPI in 2001, Mr. Gresser served as Policy Advisor to U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky. In this position, from April 1998 through the close of the Clinton Administration, he was the USTR's principal policy advisor, speechwriter and research aide. In a span of three years, Mr. Gresser twice received USTR's prestigious "Special Achievement Award," first for contribution to passage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act and Caribbean Basin Initiative enhancement, and then for accomplishment "far above and beyond the call of duty" in the negotiation of China's WTO accession agreement and passage of permanent Normal Trade Relations.
Earlier, as Legislative Assistant and then Policy Director for Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) between 1993 and 1998, Mr. Gresser was responsible for staff work on trade foreign policy and other matters, with particular focus on developing and building broad consensus for a policy of engagement in China. Before joining Baucus' staff, Mr. Gresser worked for the consulting firm Podesta Associates, and as a Legislative Assistant for Congressman Silvio Conte of Massachusetts.
Mr. Gresser graduated from Stanford University with Distinction in Political Science in 1984. He earned a Master's Degree from Columbia University and a Certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union in 1987. He is an Advisory Board Member for the Trade, Aid and Security Coalition (http://www.tascglobal.org/), an informal Advocacy Advisor for the Thai Alliance in the USA (http://taausa.org/), and a board member of the Washington International Trade Association (www.wita.org). He teaches a graduate course on trade policy at Johns Hopkins University, and on weekends volunteers as an essay-writing and American history tutor for Thai-American teenagers. He and his wife Siriporn Gresser have one son.
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