Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for China, Mongolia and Taiwan Affairs
Terry McCartin serves as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for China, Mongolia and Taiwan Affairs. In that capacity, he is responsible for developing and implementing U.S. trade policy toward China, Hong Kong, Macau, Mongolia and Taiwan.
Mr. McCartin served as one of the lead U.S. negotiators for the Economic and Trade Agreement between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China, signed in January 2020. This agreement requires structural reforms and other changes to China’s economic and trade regime in the areas of intellectual property, technology transfer, agriculture, financial services, and currency and foreign exchange, among other things. Mr. McCartin has also chaired Trade and Investment Framework Agreement Council meetings with U.S. trade partners, including Taiwan and Mongolia. Mr. McCartin currently serves as the chief U.S. negotiator for the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st Century Trade. Through this initiative, which is being conducted under the auspices of the American Institute in Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States, the two sides are seeking to conclude trade agreements covering the areas of customs and trade facilitation, good regulatory practices, services domestic regulation, anticorruption, small and medium-sized enterprises, agriculture, standards, digital trade, labor, environment, state-owned enterprises and non-market policies and practices.
Previously, Mr. McCartin served as the Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for China Affairs (from 2006 to 2017) and the Senior Director for Monitoring and Enforcement for China (from 2001 to 2006). In those capacities, Mr. McCartin chaired the interagency Trade Policy Staff Committee’s Subcommittee on China, whose principal mission was to oversee and coordinate the U.S. government’s efforts to ensure that China fully implemented the commitments that it made upon acceding to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. Mr. McCartin was also responsible for the enforcement of China’s WTO obligations, including through the pursuit of meritorious WTO dispute settlement cases in areas such as discriminatory taxation policies, local content requirements, export restraints on raw materials, subsidies, intellectual property rights, theatrical films, financial information services, electronic payment services, trade remedies, and domestic support and tariff-rate quota administration for agricultural commodities. He also served as the lead U.S. negotiator for the U.S.-China Memorandum of Understanding Regarding Films for Theatrical Release, signed in 2012, which significantly increased the number of movies that can be imported into China each year as well as the U.S. side’s share of box office revenues. In addition, Mr. McCartin participated in numerous high-level U.S.-China trade dialogues (from 2004 through 2017). He also served as the lead U.S. negotiator for the U.S.-Mongolia Transparency Agreement, signed in 2013, which represents the first stand-alone transparency agreement for the United States in the area of trade and investment.
Prior to joining the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Mr. McCartin worked in the General Counsel’s Office of the U.S. Department of Commerce. As the Senior Counsel for WTO Subsidies Enforcement, he participated in the WTO accession negotiations with China in the areas of subsidies, antidumping duties and safeguards. He also represented the United States in trade disputes before the WTO in the areas of anti-dumping and countervailing duties and served as a U.S. delegate to multilateral working groups studying the interaction between trade and competition policy under the auspices of the WTO, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum and the North American Free Trade Agreement. In addition, he advised the Commerce Department regarding the conduct of antidumping and countervailing duty investigations and represented the Commerce Department in litigation before U.S. courts.
Prior to joining the Commerce Department’s legal staff, Mr. McCartin practiced as an attorney with a Washington, D.C., law firm and served as a law clerk to the Honorable John Lewis Smith, Jr., Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Mr. McCartin attended Stanford University and Georgetown University Law School, from which he graduated cum laude.
