The Economy

Don't Write Off Doha Just Yet

April 19, 2006

Although there's not a lot of reason to believe that the current Doha Round of international trade negotiations under the auspices of the World Trade Organization will produce a comprehensive agreement by yearend, don't fault April 18's White House announced change in U.S. trade negotiators. The talks were 16 months behind schedule before the announce, frustrated by disagreements over agricultural subsidies and a more generalized divide between the world's rich countries and developing nations.

Subject to Senate confirmation, current U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman will become director of the White House Office of Management & Budget and Susan Schwab, a deputy U.S. trade negotiator, will replace Portman.

"Susan Schwab is an excellent choice to take the lead" at the U.S. Trade Office, said John Engler, president of the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Manufacturers. Engler noted that since joining the trade office last November, Schwab had been "actively engaged" in the development of U.S. negotiating strategy for the Doha Round and had concluded U.S. free-trade agreements with Peru and Colombia.

"President Bush could not have made a better choice for United States Trade Representative than Susan Schwab," said Thomas J. Duesterberg, president and CEO of the Manufacturers Alliance, an Arlington, Va.-based business and public policy research group. "Her broad background in government and academia is strengthened by high-level experience in the business world. This combination gives her the credibility to be a strong advocate for American interests in the global economy.

Schwab was a senior aide to former U.S. Sen. John Danforth (R., Mo.), was director general of the U.S. & Foreign Commercial service during the administration of George H.W. Bush, was director of corporate business development at Motorola Inc. and was dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.