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Paul Piquado

Paul Piquado

Assistant Secretary for Enforcement & Compliance
U.S. Department of Commerce
International Trade Administration

Paul Piquado is Assistant Secretary for Enforcement & Compliance at the International Trade Administration. 

In this capacity, Mr. Piquado oversees the administration of the nation’s trade remedy laws and helps to ensure that the nation’s trading partners abide by their international commitments, thereby providing U.S. businesses and their employees the opportunity to compete on a level playing field both in the United States and abroad.  This includes overseeing the prosecution of new antidumping and countervailing duty investigations, the administration of approximately 300 existing trade remedy orders and suspension agreements, as well as any litigation that may arise from these proceedings in U.S. federal courts and binational panels constituted under the North American Free Trade Agreement.  

Mr. Piquado is also responsible for coordinating World Trade Organization trade remedy negotiations, and heads the Department’s efforts to develop and establish high-quality rules and disciplines on behalf of U.S. enterprises in the context of other bilateral and multilateral trade and investment negotiations.  This includes the development of text-based rules governing customs, trade facilitation, import licensing, anticorruption, competition, state owned enterprises, and trade-related investment measures including local content requirements, as well as the development of disciplines regulating government procurement and broad based obligations involving technical barriers to trade.  Once such rules have been established, Mr. Piquado and his team work closely with the business community to monitor over 250 industrial trade agreements—and advocate on behalf of U.S. firms with foreign governments—to ensure that companies and investors receive the benefits of these obligations.  These efforts help maintain important export markets for U.S. firms and provide companies the access and certainty they need to sell their products overseas. 

Mr. Piquado also helps to facilitate trade and promote business investment and commercial activity in the United States by overseeing the administration of the U.S. Foreign Trade Zones program, and the program’s approximately 250 general purpose zones and 500 subzones.

Mr. Piquado previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Negotiations in the Department of Commerce's Import Administration.  In this position, Mr. Piquado oversaw the development and implementation of policies governing the administration of the AD/CVD statutes to ensure the robust enforcement and sound and consistent application of the trade remedy laws.  He was also responsible for the negotiation and oversight of all departmental suspension agreements/price undertakings, and the administration of the steel import licensing system and statutory import program.

Prior to joining the Commerce Department, Mr. Piquado was Executive Director of the Office of Trade Policy for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, where he served as the principal advisor to the Governor on international trade and investment policy and, among other things, helped lead the development of the Commonwealth’s World Trade PA initiative.  During this period Mr. Piquado also served as a cleared advisor to the U.S. Trade Representative’s Intergovernmental Policy Advisory Committee on Trade.

Before entering government service, Mr. Piquado worked as an attorney in private practice at Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP and Powell Goldstein Frazer & Murphy LLP where he advised parties on trade remedy matters, precedent setting WTO and investor-state disputes, and provided guidance to clients on a range of international trade and investment policy matters.  

Mr. Piquado received a J.D. from the New York University School of Law, and an M.A.L.D. from the Fletcher School.  Mr. Piquado received his B.A. from Williams College.  After review by the Senate Committee on Finance, Mr. Piquado’s nomination was unanimously approved by the full Senate in October 2011.