Jim Loi is Partner and Chief Operating Officer at The Asia Group and a member of the Executive Committee. Prior to joining The Asia Group, Jim spent 22 years in the Department of State as a career Foreign Service Officer and member of the Senior Foreign Service. Abroad he served in a range of economic, political, and security related policy and management positions at U.S. embassies in Singapore, Beijing, Pretoria, and Bucharest. In Washington, Jim was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asian & Pacific Affairs, Director for East Asian Affairs at the National Security Council (NSC), Director for China & Japan at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), and visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) – Freeman Chair in China Studies.
Throughout his career, commercial diplomacy and trade policy have been central themes in Jim’s work. At USTR he worked closely with private sector stakeholders on insurance and agricultural trade issues and at the NSC he was responsible for APEC and played a leading role in the development of the Obama Administration’s U.S.-China Strategic & Economic Dialogue. In China, he led Embassy Beijing’s Trade Policy Office, served as Mission coordinator of then Treasury Secretary Paulson’s Strategic Economic Dialogue, and sat on AmCham Beijing’s trade policy committee. He and his staff played a critical role in the tracking and enforcement of China’s WTO accession commitments and were among the first to raise early alarm bells on, and analyze the trade policy challenges posed by, China’s then emerging indigenous innovation policies. In Singapore, Jim and his staff monitored and led enforcement of the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement and were instrumental in facilitating negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) FTA. Jim served as a non-voting board member of AmCham Singapore, supporting the interests of the over 3,700 U.S. companies resident there.
Jim is a former U.S. Navy enlisted sailor and surface warfare officer with over 15 years of active and reserve service, including active duty tours onboard a destroyer and frigate in the Pacific Fleet. He left Naval service with the rank of Commander and is a veteran of Operation Desert Storm. Jim received a Bachelor of Arts in international relations from Cornell University. Jim resides in Falls Church, VA. He and his late wife, Jennifer, have three children.