Lori Wallach is the director of the Rethink Trade program at American Economic Liberties Project. She is also Senior Advisor to the Citizens Trade Campaign, the U.S. national trade justice coalition of unions and environmental, consumer, faith, family farm and other groups.
Wallach, a 30-year veteran of international and U.S. congressional trade battles starting with the 1990s fights over NAFTA and WTO, has encyclopedic knowledge of trade pacts, policies, outcomes and politics. She was named to “Politico’s 50” list of thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics for her leadership in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) debate. She is an internationally recognized expert on trade with experience advocating in Congress and foreign parliaments, trade negotiations, courts, government agencies, the media and in the streets. Dubbed “the Trade Debate’s Guerrilla Warrior” in a National Journal profile and “Ralph Nader with a sense of humor” in a Wall Street Journal profile, Wallach combines a lawyer’s expertise on the terms and outcomes of agreements with insight from the front lines of trade debates. Wallach’s specialty is translating arcane trade issues into accessible language.
A lawyer who has worked in television news and on political campaigns, Wallach has testified on TPP, WTO, China trade, NAFTA, Fast Track, and other globalization issues before 30 congressional committees and appeared as a trade commentator on MSNBC, Fox, CNN, ABC, Bloomberg, PBS, NPR and numerous foreign outlets. She has been published and quoted in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, The Economist, Forbes, USA Today, and more. She is currently focused on the dangerous Big Tech “digital trade” ploy to lock in their monopoly powers and evade regulation, supply chain disasters caused by decades of hyperglobalization and corporate concentration, and the trade-pact-enforced monopolies limiting the supply of vaccines needed to end the pandemic.
Books Wallach has written on trade include The Rise and Fall of Fast Track Trade Authority (2013) and Whose Trade Organization? A Comprehensive Guide to the WTO (2004). In 1991, she began Public Citizen’s trade program, founding its Global Trade Watch division in 1995 and directing it for 26 years. Wallach was a founder of the Citizens Trade Campaign, the U.S. national coalition representing more than 11 million Americans, and serves on its board. Wallach is a native of Wisconsin, graduated from Wellesley College and Harvard Law School and now spends much of her time in Washington, D.C.
Wallach was a founder of the Citizens Trade Campaign, a U.S. national coalition of consumer, labor, environmental, family farm, religious, and civil rights groups representing over 11 million Americans, and serves on its board. Wallach is a graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard Law School.