Picard Kentz & Rowe is pleased to announce Dan Stirk’s addition to our team as Counsel. With over 20 years of experience in both the public and private sectors, Dan joins the firm with unparalleled expertise in international trade law and policy.
Dan graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a research assistant for Professor John H. Jackson and a fellow of the Institute of International Economic Law. He received a B.A. with honors from the University of Florida, double-majoring in English and Economics and minoring in French. As an undergraduate, Dan was elected to the Society Phi Beta Kappa.
Following law school, Dan began his practice of international trade law at the Law Offices of Stewart and Stewart. Over five years, Dan represented an assortment of labor unions, trade groups, U.S. corporations, and an Alaskan salmon fisher (pro bono), both as a litigator in complex administrative litigation and as an advocate for his clients’ legislative objectives. As a private practitioner, Dan litigated proceedings before the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. International Trade Commission, the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Court of International Trade, and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
In 2007, Dan left private practice to join the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). He served as an attorney-advisor at USTR for nearly eighteen years, rising to the level of Chief Counsel for Litigation. During his tenure at USTR, Dan litigated and served as head of U.S. delegations during all phases of WTO dispute settlement proceedings, including government-to-government consultations, panel proceedings, Appellate Body review, compliance proceedings, and arbitrations concerning compliance periods and countermeasures. Dan participated in dozens of international trade disputes at the WTO, under NAFTA, under USMCA, and under the Softwood Lumber Agreement of 2006 between the United States and Canada. At the WTO, among other things, Dan successfully defended the U.S. Commerce Department’s methodology for analyzing subsidies provided by public bodies in China and, for the first time in almost two decades and after a long series of U.S. losses, Dan persuaded a WTO dispute settlement panel in 2019 to find in favor of the United States on Commerce’s use of zeroing in antidumping proceedings.
Dan also advised policy clients and senior U.S. government officials at USTR, in the Executive Office of the President, and throughout the executive branch. He served as lead counsel and lead negotiator for the negotiation of international trade agreements, including telecommunications mutual recognition agreements and other plurilateral and bilateral trade agreements. He actively participated in and managed U.S. government interagency processes to formulate U.S. policies and strategies in trade negotiations and to resolve concerns about the practices of U.S. trading partners, including working with the Department of State, Department of the Treasury, Department of Commerce, Department of Agriculture, Department of the Interior, U.S. International Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission, National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Small Business Administration.