WASHINGTON – The Office of the United States Trade Representative today announced that Rufino Hurtado will serve as the Senior Trade Representative at the U.S. Mission to the European Union in Brussels, Belgium. Rufino is a skilled trade policy professional with over fifteen years of experience across both the public and private sectors.
Rufino joined USTR in January 2017 in the Office of Agricultural Affairs and Commodity Policy. He has served in a variety of roles since, including most recently as a Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative. Rufino is the first Latino American to have been appointed to this role.
The Senior Trade Representative at the U.S. Mission to the EU acts as an essential liaison for USTR in Brussels and helps to promote and to enact USTR’s transatlantic trade priorities.
Rufino Hurtado, Senior Trade Representative at the U.S. Mission to the EU
Rufino Hurtado has been appointed to serve as the Senior Trade Representative for USTR in the U.S. Mission to the European Union in Brussels, Belgium. He joined USTR’s Office of Agricultural Affairs and Commodity Policy in January 2017, serving in a variety of roles, most recently as a Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative.
In his role at USTR, Rufino brings over fifteen years of trade policy experience in the food and agriculture, consumer-packaged goods and professional services sectors. He has extensive experience engaging with trading partner governments, multilateral institutions, non-governmental organizations and the private sector, and has covered geographies ranging from Southeast Asia, Korea, China, Europe, and Latin America. Among other responsibilities at USTR, he was appointed to lead negotiations for agricultural market access and sanitary and phytosanitary commitments in free trade agreement negotiations with the United Kingdom and Kenya.
Prior to USTR, Rufino was a Director for Global Strategies at the Consumer Brands Association, where he worked with consumer-packaged goods companies to coordinate advocacy with the World Health Organization and its regional bodies, and with governments throughout the Western Hemisphere on nutrition and commercial policies. He has also served as an International Trade Specialist at both the Departments of Commerce and Agriculture.
Rufino has a Master’s Degree in International Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University, an MBA from George Washington University, and a Bachelors in Business Administration and Political Science from Adelphi University. He is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.
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