A handful of business representatives that are closely following the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations have taken new jobs over the last few months.
Linda Menghetti, an expert on investment issues who formerly served as vice president of the Emergency Committee for American Trade, left that position at the end of August and has moved over to the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), where she is taking the position vacated by Frank Vargo, sources said.
Vargo retired last June after serving for years as NAM’s vice president for international affairs. In her new role, Menghetti will likely have a hand in hiring a replacement for Steve Jacobs, who left his job as senior director for international business policy at NAM earlier this year in order to work for Philip Morris International.
Philip Morris is vehemently opposing U.S. efforts to craft tobacco-specific provisions in a TPP deal, and is working with other business groups and members of Congress to gin up opposition.
In another big move, the biotechnology company known as Amgen this summer hired Paul Neureiter to serve as executive director for international government affairs. Neureiter previously served as senior director for international trade at Pfizer Inc., and before that covered trade-related insurance issues for The ACE Group.
Amgen is pushing hard to convince the Obama administration to demand stringent intellectual property protections for biologic drugs in the TPP talks. At Amgen, Neureiter now works alongside Catherine Robinson, who joined the international corporate affairs team at Amgen last year after covering high-tech trade issues at NAM for years.
In his previous role at Pfizer, Neureiter worked with Doug Goudie, who served as NAM’s director of international trade policy for five years before joining Pfizer last January as its director of international government affairs.
Kathryn Dickey Karol is joining Caterpillar Inc. next week in the newly created position of vice president with responsibility for global government and corporate affairs. Karol previously served as vice president of global government and corporate affairs for Amgen, a position she had held since 2006.
Prior to her work at Amgen, Karol served as executive director of government affairs for Eli Lilly & Company, according to a Caterpillar press release.
Rounding out the job swaps, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) announced on Aug. 28 that Scott Miller, the former director of global trade policy at Procter & Gamble, has joined CSIS as the new William M. Scholl Chair in International Business.
Miller takes the place of Meredith Broadbent, who has been appointed to the International Trade Commission.
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