TRADE - Key Persons
Jean Heilman Grier is the Trade Principal at Djaghe, LLC., where she advises and provides assistance to businesses, governments, international organizations and trade groups on a wide variety of international trade and procurement issues. Her expertise includes global procurement, trade policy, U.S. trade laws (including Sections 201 and 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962), international trade agreements and trade negotiations. She is the author of The International Procurement System: Liberalization & Protectionism, Washington: Dalston Press, 2022 and numerous other publications. She also maintains a blog, Perspectives on Trade, at http://trade.djaghe.com.
Ms. Grier has more than 35 years of experience in international trade as a U.S. trade negotiator, lawyer, adviser and consultant. She served as the Senior Procurement Negotiator for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). In that role, she was the U.S. negotiator for the WTO Government Procurement Agreement and procurement chapters in numerous free trade agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership. She also led preparations for the procurement negotiations in the U.S.-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
Prior to joining USTR, Ms. Grier served as Senior Counsel for Trade Agreements in the Office of the General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Commerce. In that position, she dealt with a wide range of international trade issues, including the negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, as well as numerous Japanese bilateral agreements and regulatory and administrative law issues. She also participated in anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations, as well as investigations conducted under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
Before entering the U.S. government, Ms. Grier was an Assistant Attorney General with the State of Minnesota. With that Office, she served as Chief of the Public Utilities Division, representing the State in electric, gas and telecommunications rate cases, Chief of the Consumer Protection Division, which litigated consumer fraud cases, and as the first attorney for the Minnesota Environmental Quality Board.
Ms. Grier received law degrees from the University of Minnesota (J.D.) and the University of Washington (LL.M) and an undergraduate degree from South Dakota State University. She is admitted to the bar in Minnesota and in the District of Colombia. As a Fulbright Scholar at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, she conducted research on Japanese administrative law.