Dan Stirk

Dan Stirk represents U.S. domestic industry clients on international trade matters and advises clients on legislative and regulatory issues.  He has extensive experience advocating before the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Office of the United States Trade Representative, the U.S. Court of International Trade, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the World Trade Organization, free trade agreement dispute settlement panels, USMCA binational review panels, and international arbitrators.  He has developed deep expertise in antidumping measures, subsidies, countervailing measures, government procurement, environment enforcement, the energy sector, and the steel, bearings, softwood lumber, dairy, and wine and spirits industries.

Prior to joining Picard Kentz & Rowe in January 2025, Dan served for nearly eighteen years as an attorney-advisor at the Office of the United States Trade Representative, rising to the level of Chief Counsel for Litigation. While at USTR, he 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 Chinese public bodies and, for the first time in almost two decades and after a long series of U.S. losses, 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.

Previously, Dan was an associate at a boutique law firm in Washington, DC, which specialized in international trade law.  The firm’s clients included U.S. producers of steel, bearings, and pencils, as well as tomato farmers, cattle ranchers, salmon fishers, and steelworkers’ unions.

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.