Kelley Drye Continues to Bolster International Trade Policy Team with Addition of Former Deputy United States Trade Representative, Jayme White

Kelley Drye & Warren LLP is pleased to announce that former Deputy United States Trade Representative Jayme White will join the firm as a senior international trade advisor, working in the firm’s nationally recognized International Trade practice group.

Ambassador White spent more than two years as Deputy U.S. Trade Representative, where he helped lead the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s engagement with key trading partners in the Western Hemisphere, Europe and the Middle East. He was responsible for leading USTR’s activities on significant labor and environmental issues and broadly represented the United States in many different trade fora, domestically and overseas.

In announcing his departure from the agency, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said, ​“Ambassador Jayme White played an integral role in leading USTR’s work with our partners around the world, including the enforcement of the USMCA, as well as the global arrangement on sustainable steel and aluminum and the critical minerals agreement negotiations.”

Prior to serving as Deputy United States Trade Representative, Jayme spent two decades as an influential senior staff member in Congress, working on a wide range of issues in the office of Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA), a prominent member of the House Ways & Means Committee. Jayme’s tenure with Congressman McDermott started his involvement in major trade issues including legislation related to trade, tax, environment and energy, which extended throughout his time working on Capitol Hill.

After nine years with Congressman McDermott, Jayme moved to the U.S. Senate, where he served for 12 years, most notably as the Chief Advisor for International Competitiveness and Innovation for the Senate Committee on Finance, under the leadership of Chairman Ron Wyden of Oregon. During his Senate tenure, Jayme led efforts to level the playing field for American innovators and workers, by shaping policies related to technology, intellectual property, tax, energy, environment and trade, including through trade negotiations and agreements. These efforts entailed crafting and advancing legislation to amend the U.S. trade laws to better respond to unfair foreign trade practices. In his role on the Finance Committee, he represented and advanced bipartisan U.S. views to foreign trade leaders, and the outcomes of those efforts are evident in many trade agreements, including key provisions relating to enforceable measures on labor, energy, and the environment in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

“Jayme played a role in nearly every major trade issue and trade legislation of the past 20 years, and our clients will benefit tremendously from his decades of experience advising and shaping U.S. policy on international trade, intellectual property, the digital economy, labor, energy and environmental issues,” said John Herrmann, chair of the firm’s International Trade practice.

Kelley Drye’s leading International Trade practice operates at the intersection of trade law and public policy to advocate for clients where trade policy is debated and established—in the halls of Congress and before Executive Branch agencies. The bipartisan team collaborates to provide legal and policy advice to clients and to ensure that government officials hear the positions of the companies, industries and organizations it represents.

“I am thrilled to join this world-class international trade and global commerce team, and I’m excited for the opportunity to help the firm’s clients continue to be competitive in a fast-changing global market,” said Ambassador White. ​“Kelley Drye is well known for its work on behalf of the companies, innovators, and workers who drive the American economy. The firm also has a long record of success in pushing for key reforms to US trade and economic policies to better respond to unfair foreign trade and economic practices designed to sideline American producers. Joining this advocacy-focused practice will amplify in the private sector what I sought to achieve in public service.”

Kelley Drye’s international trade practice includes attorneys with more than four decades of work on federal trade policy, including several former Senate and House staff members; a former White House Senior Director for International Trade, Energy, and Environment; a former international trade counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means; a former policy advisor to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, and leading international trade practitioners who assist clients on matters vital to their international business. In February of this year, former Assistant United States Trade Representative for Labor Affairs, Joshua Kagan, joined the firm.