Mark Linscott is a Senior Advisor with The Asia Group, where he works closely with clients on trade and investment priorities across South Asia. He also serves as a Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.
Previously, Mark was the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) for South and Central Asian Affairs from December 2016 to December 2018. He was the U.S. government lead in developing trade policy with the countries in South and Central Asia and led efforts in the bilateral Trade Policy Forum with India and in Trade and Investment Framework Agreements (TIFAs) with Central Asia, Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
Mark served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for World Trade Organization (WTO) and Multilateral Affairs from 2012 to 2016 with responsibility for coordinating U.S. trade policies in the WTO. He and his team were responsible for negotiation and implementation of WTO accessions and the Trade Facilitation Agreement and regionally managed negotiations in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) on customs matters, government procurement, subsidies and trade remedies, and technical barriers to trade. Mark also represented the United States in trade meetings of the Group of Twenty (G-20) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Mark was the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Environment and Natural Resources from October 2003 to March 2012. In this capacity, he oversaw all trade and environment issues for USTR, including related free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations, such as the TPP, and the WTO and OECD. During this period, he developed a robust agenda on illegal logging and associated trade through Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and bilateral agreements with Indonesia and China.
From 1996 to 2002, Mark represented the United States at the U.S. Mission to the WTO in Geneva, covering trade in services, customs, antidumping, subsidies, and government procurement. He was a founding member of the WTO Pension Fund Management Board. Prior to serving in Geneva, he worked in the Office of WTO and Multilateral Affairs in USTR Washington, where he concluded the Uruguay Round Government Procurement Agreement as the lead U.S. negotiator and was responsible for preparations for the entry-into-force of the WTO.
Mark started his career at the Department of Commerce, serving from 1985 to 1988 in Import Administration, and from 1988 to 1992 in the Office of Multilateral Affairs. He was awarded a Gold Medal Award, the Commerce Department’s highest honor, for his work on the 1986 Canadian softwood lumber investigation.
Mark holds a BA in economics from the University of Virginia and a JD from Georgetown University Law Center. He and his wife, Karen, live in Washington D.C., where he tinkers on his café racer and bicycles and paddles on the Potomac.