Robert LaRussa, counsel in the Washington office with extensive experience in international trade and investment, spoke on March 4 at the Georgetown University Law Center's 2011 International Trade Update. LaRussa, a former U.S. Commerce Under Secretary for International Trade, spoke on a panel focusing on recent proposed changes in the methodology used by the Commerce Department in certain aspects of U.S. antidumping and countervailing duty trade laws, which LaRussa administered as Assistant Secretary for Import Administration during the Clinton Administration.

LaRussa focused on the findings of a paper he and Shearman & Sterling associate Bryan Dayton wrote for the conference, which analyzed 14 specific proposals to strengthen the administration of U.S. trade laws made in August 2010 by the Commerce Department as part of the Obama Administration's National Export Initiative. LaRussa noted that many of these changes focused on how to deal with imports from Chinese companies, which are treated as "non-market economies" under U.S. antidumping law. LaRussa also noted that the Commerce Department seemed to be evolving in its views of how to analyze potential Chinese subsidies and dumping in light of the evolution of the Chinese economy. 

View the LaRussa/Dayton Georgetown University International Trade Conference paper