Jean Anderson, a senior partner in the firm’s Washington DC-based International Trade group, is an international trade strategist and litigator for companies and governments around the world. Together with a team of highly experienced attorneys specializing in trade in goods and services, investment, and public policy, she provides strategic and substantive advice in international trade negotiations, litigates antidumping and subsidies cases, and advises and represents clients in WTO and other trade agreement disputes, on trade legislation, and on market access, economic sanctions, export controls, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other trade and regulatory issues in the US and abroad. Her focus is on helping clients create the international business and trade policy environment in which they will operate most successfully.
Ms. Anderson is counsel to the Government of Canada and lead respondents’ counsel in the largest countervailing duty and antidumping cases in history, on softwood lumber. She and her colleagues have litigated antidumping, countervailing duty, safeguard, section 301, and section 337 intellectual property cases involving steel, semiconductors, telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics, film, chemicals, industrial equipment, metals, and food and agricultural products.
Ms. Anderson and the firm’s International Trade group have counseled Canada, Chile, Ecuador and a number of companies on WTO disputes involving softwood lumber, aircraft trade, liquor taxes, bananas, autos and telecoms services. They have successfully represented companies in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Canada, and the US, a variety of banks and other financial institutions, and agricultural producers, exporters, and associations on matters ranging from trade remedy proceedings to international negotiations and market access. They have been principal legal advisors to the Government of Canada on NAFTA and the negotiation and implementation of the WTO agreements; the Government of Chile on NAFTA accession, the Chile-Canada FTA, and the Chile-US FTA; El Salvador and Australia on FTA negotiations with the US and several governments on Helms-Burton and other economic sanctions, bilateral trade agreements, and a variety of other trade policy issues. Working with Weil Gotshal’s offices around the world, they have worked effectively for clients on trade issues vis-à-vis the US, EU, and other governments. They have appeared frequently before WTO and NAFTA panels and in US courts.
Before joining Weil Gotshal in 1989, Ms. Anderson was chief counsel for International Trade at the US Department of Commerce. In that position, she was a principal negotiator of the US-Canada FTA and a primary architect of the Chapter 19 dispute settlement system. Heading an office of some 50 attorneys, her responsibilities included trade policy formulation, subsidies/antidumping and other trade remedy actions, GATT/WTO and bilateral trade negotiations, international intellectual property and competition law issues, investment, economic sanctions and export controls, and trade legislation. In prior government and private positions, Ms. Anderson was a chief US negotiator on steel trade and an international business consultant on Asia.
Ms. Anderson has been a member of the Council of the International Law Section of the American Bar Association, has chaired the Section’s International Trade and Canada Committees, and has chaired or been a member of task forces on trade and competition law, NAFTA, and the EU. A frequent lecturer, she has taught international trade law at Georgetown University Law Center, and served on the Board of the Canadian American Business Council.