About Us
A coalition built on experience, expertise, and conviction.
We bring together trade and economic policy leaders working to build a new approach to U.S. trade — one connected to the lives of the people and communities it affects.
Our Mission
Bridging the gap between policy and people.
The Coalition for New Trade is a growing community of trade and economic policy experts, advocates, and partners working to advance a new vision: trade policy that's connected, accountable, and grounded in the interests of working people.
For decades, U.S. trade policy has been shaped largely by the priorities of its largest players. The result has been an economy where the benefits of trade are unevenly shared and where too many communities have been left behind. We believe it's time for a different approach — one that raises standards instead of eroding them, fosters communities instead of starving them, and values people and the planet rather than exploiting them.
What we need is a new trade policy and a new way of making that policy.
Our work bridges the gap between the policy roundtables of conference presentations, spreadsheets, and white papers and the everyday kitchen table where people share their frustrations about what isn't working — and their hopes for how things could be better and more fair.
Our Team
Who We Are
The Coalition is led by some of the country's most respected voices in trade policy — practitioners who have shaped U.S. trade strategy at the highest levels.
Leadership
Katherine Tai
Executive Director
As the 19th United States Trade Representative, Katherine Tai served as the nation's principal advisor, negotiator, and spokesperson on trade policy from 2021–2025.
During that time, Katherine spearheaded a major shift at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), recognizing the need for the agency to speak for the interests of the entire U.S. economy, not only its largest players. She prioritized reaching out to America's small business owners, workers, family farmers and ranchers, and engaging communities directly. She and her team are the first in USTR history to travel to all 50 states.
Prior to her unanimous Senate confirmation in 2021, Katherine served as Chief Trade Counsel to the House Ways and Means Committee, playing a pivotal role during the first Trump administration in the re-negotiation and ratification of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. She is also an experienced litigator and served as USTR's Chief Counsel for China Trade Enforcement from 2011 to 2014.
Katherine was born in New Haven, Connecticut and raised in Bethesda, Maryland and Washington, DC. She majored in history at Yale University and received her law degree from Harvard Law School.
Leadership
Beth Baltzan
Deputy Director
Beth Baltzan is a trade law and economic policy expert with 30 years' experience in the private sector and in government. Most recently, Beth served as Counselor for Trade and Investment at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR).
Her government experience includes senior roles on Capitol Hill as Trade Counsel for the House Ways and Means Committee and for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, where she investigated banking practices. Beth also worked at the Office of International Affairs at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, on oversight in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
In addition to a decorated career as a trade litigator defending U.S. trade remedies laws before the World Trade Organization, Beth also participated in trade agreement negotiations at USTR during the George W. Bush and Obama administrations on topics from customs and rules of origin to intellectual property.
Beth was born in Saskatchewan, Canada and grew up on Oahu, Hawaiʻi. She studied international relations at Stanford University and received her law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center.
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Become a supporter and help shape a trade policy that works for everyone.