EU and USA: How to Build a Positive Agenda

BusinessEurope’s new position paper, EU and USA: How to Build a Positive Agenda, presents the views of its national member organizations across 35 European countries for unlocking the transatlantic relationship to enhance trade and economic cooperation.

Among the priority areas for the U.S. and the EU it identifies are the creation of a high-level strategic dialogue, a new approach for a potential U.S.-EU free trade agreement, joint rule-making on subsidies and state-owned enterprises, as well as opportunities for regulatory cooperation on advanced technologies like artificial intelligence.

Luisa Santos is Deputy Director General of BusinessEurope. She is responsible for international relations and Chair of BusinessEurope’s EU-UK Task Force. She was a member of the TTIP Advisory Group and is now a member of the Expert Group on EU trade agreements. Her principal experience is in trade and the textiles sector. Ms. Santos has acted first as the chief representative for the Portuguese textile industry in Brussels, later as Trade and Industry Manager for Euratex- European Apparel and Textile Confederation. She was also the manager responsible for international partnerships – including a joint venture in India – for a leading Portuguese textile company. Her academic background is law and management.

Thomas J. Duesterberg is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. Dr. Duesterberg is an expert of trade, manufacturing, economics, and foreign policy. He leads project work on trade with Europe and China, reform of the World Trade Organization (WTO), global competition in advanced technologies such as 5G, and the strength of the U.S. manufacturing sector.

Dr. Duesterberg served as an assistant secretary of commerce for international economic policy in the George H.W. Bush administration. He was executive director of the Manufacturing and Society in the 21st Century Program at the Aspen Institute. From 1999 to 2011 he served as president and CEO of the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, an economic research and executive education organization based in Virginia. He was also director of the Washington office of Hudson Institute, and associate instructor at Stanford University. He co-wrote U.S. Manufacturing: The Engine of Growth in a Global Economy and three other books, and is the author of over 200 articles in journals and major newspapers. He is on the Board of Advisors of the Manufacturing Public Policy Initiative at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs, and the Board of Trustees of the American University of Rome. He is a graduate of Princeton University (B.A.) and Indiana University (M.A., Ph.D.).

Dr. Stormy-Annika Mildner is Head of Department External Economic Policy of the Federation of German Industries. She is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and Coordinator of an SWP research project on “Competing for Scarce Resources.” Until December 2013, she was a member of the Executive Board of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), a policy-oriented think-tank based in Berlin. Her fields of interest include international trade and finance as well as commodity markets.

Before joining the SWP, she worked for the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), where she headed the program “Globalization and the World Economy” (2000-2002). From 2005 to 2006, Dr. Mildner was a lecturer at the John F. Kennedy Institute of the Free University of Berlin. In spring 2010, she was a visiting fellow at the American-German Institute in Washington, where she is still a non-resident Senior Fellow. In fall 2011 she was a visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Academy in Washington. Dr. Mildner conducted her Bachelor studies in economics and North American studies at the Free University of Berlin and earned a Master of Science in international political economy from the London School of Economics (2000). She wrote her Ph.D. thesis at the Free University of Berlin on the economic and political rationale of export credit finance in the United States. During her Ph.D. studies, she attended the Yale Center for International and Area Studies (YCIAS) of Yale University (2002-2003).

Peter S. Rashish (moderator) is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Geoeconomics Program at AGI. He also writes The Wider Atlantic blog. Mr. Rashish has served as Vice President for Europe and Eurasia at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he spearheaded the Chamber’s advocacy for an ambitious and comprehensive trade agreement between the United States and the European Union, later officially launched as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Previously, Mr. Rashish was a Senior Advisor for Europe at McLarty Associates, and has held positions as Executive Vice President of the European Institute, on the Paris-based staff of the International Energy Agency, and as a consultant to the World Bank, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Atlantic Council, the Bertelsmann Foundation, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Mr. Rashish has testified on the euro zone and U.S.-European economic relations before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade and the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia and has advised two U.S. presidential campaigns. He has been a member of the faculty at the Salzburg Global Seminar and a speaker at the Aspen Ideas Festival. His commentaries have been published in The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The National Interest, and Foreign Policy and he has appeared on PBS, CNBC, CNN, and NPR. He earned his B.A. from Harvard College and an M.Phil. in international relations from Oxford University. He speaks French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

This seminar will convene via Zoom. Contact Ms. Elizabeth Caruth, Research Associate, at ecaruth@aicgs.org with any questions.