Ed Gresser joined PPI as Director of the Project on Trade and Global Markets in February, 2001, after a 10-year career in the U.S. Congress and the Clinton administration. His first book, "Freedom From Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy," was published in November 2007.
As Project Director, Mr. Gresser's major research focuses have included economic relations between the west and the Muslim world, East Asian integration and American trade relations with China, the U.S. tariff system and its effects on low-income families and least-developed countries, as well as inter-American relations, competitiveness and worker adjustment, trends in American manufacturing, international finance and the relationship between trade, labor and environmental issues. Mr. Gresser also created PPI's widely praised "Trade Fact of the Week" electronic information service, which covers issues from the revival of high-seas piracy to robot use around the world, Ethiopia's leading role in birdseed trade, shoe tariffs and international adoption. His research has been cited by leaders of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the IMF and other institutions, and covered by major publications and news outlets including the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, the Far Eastern Economic Review and others.
Before joining PPI, Mr. Gresser served as Policy Advisor to U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky. In this position, from April 1998 through the close of the Clinton Administration, he was the USTR's principal policy advisor, speechwriter and research aide. In a span of three years, Mr. Gresser twice received USTR's prestigious "Special Achievement Award," first for contribution to passage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act and Caribbean Basin Initiative enhancement, and then for accomplishment "far above and beyond the call of duty" in the negotiation of China's WTO accession agreement and passage of permanent Normal Trade Relations.
Earlier, as Legislative Assistant and then Policy Director for Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) between 1993 and 1998, Mr. Gresser was responsible for staff work on trade foreign policy and other matters, with particular focus on developing and building broad consensus for a policy of engagement in China which advances U.S. interests and values by balancing security concerns, open trade, human rights and environmental protection in the volatile U.S. relationship with the world's largest nation. Before joining Baucus' staff, Mr. Gresser worked for the consulting firm Podesta Associates, and as a Legislative Assistant for Congressman Silvio Conte of Massachusetts.
Mr. Gresser graduated from Stanford University with Distinction in Political Science in 1984. He earned a Master's Degree from Columbia University and a Certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union in 1987. He is married to Siriporn Gresser, and they have one son.
