America's Likely U.S. Trade Representative Brings Deep Canada-U.S. Experience

iPolitics offers this insight into Michael Froman, the White House's nominee for United States Trade Representative:

With a doctorate from Oxford, Froman has been a friend of the president since their days at Harvard law school — of which he’s also a graduate.

Most recently, however, he’s played a sherpa role in the lead up to G-8, G-20, and APEC summits, and Schwab maintains he’s got the president’s full attention.

“They’ve got a USTR who clearly has the president’s ear,” Schwab followed. “I think the key is to get him in place as soon as possible.”

Scotty Greenwood — a senior advisor at the American-Canadian Business Council — told iPolitics that in addition to being extremely intelligent, Froman also has a great grasp of the Canada-U.S. relationship, having done a lot of work behind the scenes to drive forward the Beyond the Border and regulatory cooperation initiatives.

“He was the U.S. sherpa for G-20 and G-8 as well as APEC, and what that means is there are lots of opportunities for him to — from the point of view of the National Security Council and advisor to the president — to coordinate the White House interaction with the prime minister,” she said.

“Because of all the multilateral get-togethers that Canada and the U.S. are both part of, the president and the prime minister had quite a large number of opportunities to interact with each other right after the president was elected. So Michael Froman was in the middle of all that.”