Christine Bliss

Christine Bliss became CSI President in March 2016. Prior to CSI, Ms. Bliss was the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) for Services, Investment, Telecommunication, and E- Commerce, responsible for overseeing all multilateral, regional and bilateral negotiations and policy issues in those areas for the agency. She also served as the lead U.S. negotiator in the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Services Negotiations and in the WTO Bilateral Services Accession Negotiations for Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Ms. Bliss was the lead negotiator for Services and Financial Services in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations as well as previous U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations. She led the development of USTR’s digital services and investment trade agenda, including innovative new disciplines on cross-border data flows and local server requirements.

Ms. Bliss has also served as Chief Counsel and Acting Assistant USTR for Monitoring and Enforcement, responsible for managing U.S. litigation in the WTO, NAFTA, and other multilateral and bilateral trade agreements.

Before joining USTR in 2000, Ms. Bliss was Counsel to the Emergency Committee for American Trade (ECAT), an association representing U.S. Fortune 500 firms on international trade, investment, and tax issues. Prior to joining ECAT, Ms. Bliss had a wide range of experience in private practice representing foreign and domestic clients on international trade, regulatory, legislative, and policy issues as a partner in the firm of Mudge, Rose, Guthrie and Ferdon. She has also served on Capitol Hill as a legislative assistant.

Ms. Bliss is admitted to the D.C. and California Bars and received her J.D. degree from the University of California at Davis and LLM from George Washington University.