The Trump administration has hired Jennifer Thornton, who was most recently vice president for trade at the Business Roundtable trade association, to be general counsel at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the trade agency’s highest legal position.
Thornton previously worked at USTR from November 2012 to June 2017 — across most of President Barack Obama’s second term — rising to the position of senior policy adviser to then-U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman. She left the trade agency five months after the start of President Donald Trump’s first term. She held a number of jobs in the following years, including a stint as trade counsel for the House Ways and Means Committee, before joining the BRT in 2022.
The Washington-based business group is comprised of more than 200 CEOs from leading U.S. corporations and has long supported free trade policy for the United States. The current chair is Chuck Robbins, the chair and CEO of Cisco Systems.
Despite its free-trade leanings, the BRT has been somewhat restrained in criticizing Trump’s tariffs action in the early days of his second term. However, the group’s CEO, Joshua Bolten, did issue a statement last week urging Trump to avoid using “overly-broad, long-lasting tariffs.”
