Richard W. Fisher
Richard W. Fisher is the Managing Director of Kissinger McLarty Associates, in partnership with Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State for Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, and Mack McLarty, former White House Chief of Staff in the William Jefferson Clinton Administration.
Fisher, from 1997 to 2001, was Deputy United States Trade Representative (USTR) with the rank of Ambassador. During this period, Ambassador Fisher oversaw trade policy for Asia and the Pacific and the Americas. He represented the U.S. at both the 1999 New Zealand and 2000 Australia Ministerial meetings of the 21-member states of APEC.
Ambassador Fisher negotiated the U.S.-Korea Auto Agreement of 1998; the U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement, which was signed by President Bush in 2001; and the initiation of the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement. He was a member of the team that negotiated the U.S.-China agreement for Chinese accession to the World Trade Organization and, separately, the bilateral aspects of Taiwan's accession. He chaired the American delegation for the Enhanced Initiative on Competition and Deregulation of the Japanese Economy for three years, an exercise that resulted in significant changes in the structure of Japan's telecommunications (the deregulation of NTT's telephone monopoly), housing, energy, health care, retailing (the "Large Scale Retail Store Law"), and financial sectors.
Fisher was the chief operating officer of the U.S. government for NAFTA, the largest trading relationship of the U.S., accounting for 40% of U.S. exports and 30% of U.S. imports. He had oversight responsibilities for the development of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, representing the U.S. at the Ministerial (Cabinet) level for multilateral negotiations with the 33 Latin and Caribbean nations involved. He negotiated numerous high-profile issues throughout the hemisphere, including the deregulation of Telmex, the removal of Canadian restrictions on U.S. magazine publications, the protection of U.S. companies' intellectual property rights in Argentina and Brazil, and the initiation of the U.S.-Chile Free Trade Agreement.
Throughout his tenure at USTR, Ambassador Fisher served as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). He was also a member of the National Intellectual Property Law Enforcement Coordination Council.
Before joining USTR, Mr. Fisher was managing partner of Value Partners Ltd. and Fisher Capital Management from 1987 through 1997. With $500 million in equity capital, both firms specialized in buying claims to publicly-traded assets selling significantly below true value in securities markets of the U.S., Europe and throughout Asia. (Mr. Fisher resided in Tokyo in 1990.)
Previously, Mr. Fisher was senior manager of Brown Brothers Harriman and Co., where he began his career in 1975 specializing in fixed income and foreign exchange markets.
Mr. Fisher is a first generation American. He is equally fluent in Spanish and English, having spent his formative years in Mexico. He attended the U.S. Naval Academy (1967-1969), graduated with honors from Harvard in economics (1971), read Latin American history at Oxford (1972-1973), and received an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business (1975).
Throughout his career, Mr. Fisher has maintained his academic interests starting in 1982-84 when he served as Chairman of the Trustees of the Stanford University Business School Trust. Subsequently, he chaired the Board of the Institute of the Americas at the University of California at San Diego; served on the Standing Academic Committee of Southern Methodist University; was Adjunct Professor at he L.B.J. School at the University of Texas where he taught a second year Masters degree course Governing America in the New Century; was a Trustee of the Institute for Contemporary German Studies at John Hopkins University and also of the School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS); served on the Visiting Committees of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and the Center International Affairs; and was a Weatherhead Fellow in 2001. He was recently elected an Honorary Fellow of Hertford College at Oxford University, and will serve on the Stanford University Graduate School of Business Advisory Board beginning in 2003.
"Richard W. Fisher, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, received The American Assembly’s Service to Democracy Award at a dinner in his honor on October 18, 2006, at the James M. Collins Executive Education Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas." [1]
Affiliations
- Director, Latin Americas Strategy Board of Hicks Muse Tate and Furst
- Director, Brookings Institution
- Director, Pacific Council
- Member, Trilateral Commission
- Member, Council on Foreign Relations/Congressional Roundtable on International Trade & Economics
- Director, US-Russia Fund (former)
- Director, University of Texas Investment Company (former)
- Director, American Council on Germany (former)
- Director, Dallas Museum of Art(former)
- Member, Inter-American Dialogue
