William E. Brock Topic: The Impact of East Bloc Reform on International Trade — 40:43 RealAudio: Click Here to Listen Help Listening

William E. Brock is founder and senior partner of The Brock Group, a Washington, D.C., consulting firm specializing in international trade, investment, and human resource and labor-management issues.

A former member of the United States Senate from Tennessee, Senator Brock served in Ronald Reagan’s Cabinet as the U.S. Trade Representative from 1981 to 1985. In that capacity, he was the President’s chief trade policy adviser and international trade negotiator. His initiatives include the Caribbean Basin Initiative and the U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement. He began the talks that led to the U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement and the current Uruguay Round of trade negotiations, taking the lead to insure that the Uruguay negotiations encompass the new issues of service, intellectual property and investment.

Senator Brock was Secretary of Labor from 1985 to 1987, a time during which he was instrumental in reviving a department in a virtual state of collapse and initiating the landmark study of the workforce and workplace demographic trends titled "Workforce 2000." Also during his tenure, the department achieved major pension reform legislation and reinvigorated efforts at labor-management cooperation.

In 1962, he became the first Republican to be elected to Congress in more than 40 years from Tennessee’s Third District. After four terms in the House of Representatives, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1970. The Republican Party Elected Senator Brock as its National Chairman in 1977, a position held throughout President Reagan’s Inauguration.

Senator Brock is a member of President Bush’s Advisory Committee on Education and serves as a Senior Counselor and Trustee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He is Chairman for the National Endowment for Democracy, the Kirkpatrick Forum, and the International Advisory Committee of the University of South Carolina, and is President of the National Academy Foundation and a member of the United States National Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation.