Yeutter Institute symposium to examine future of global trading system

The past year has brought massive changes in U.S. trade policy, including a landmark Supreme Court ruling on tariffs and preparations for an unprecedented review of the trade agreement with the United States’ two largest trading partners, Mexico and Canada. Experts from industry, law, academia and government will examine those and other factors impacting international trade during an April 21 symposium sponsored by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Clayton Yeutter Institute of International Trade and Finance. 

The fifth biennial CME Group Foundation Symposium of the Yeutter Institute will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the Nebraska East Union’s Great Plains Room and center on the theme “Toward a New International Trading System.” The event is free and open to the public and includes lunch.

Trade’s ramifications for agriculture will be the focus of one of the event’s three panels. Steve White, farm director of radio channel KRVN, will moderate the discussion, addressing “The Stakes for U.S. Agriculture.” The panel’s members will be Jordan Dux, senior director of national affairs for the Nebraska Farm Bureau Federation; Jayson Beckman, the Mike Yanney Yeutter Institute Chair in the Department of Agricultural Economics; and Joe Glauber, research fellow emeritus for the International Food Policy Research Institute and former chief economist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

Online registration is available for in-person attendance. The event also will be livestreamed through the Yeutter Institute’s website.

For those eligible, the event will provide three credits of continuing legal education.

Ken Levinson, CEO of the Washington International Trade Association and WITA Foundation, will lead a panel on “Perspectives from Law, Policy and Industry.” Mike Boyle, president of Kawasaki Motors Manufacturing Corporation, U.S.A., will provide observations as a panelist. Boyle, a Lincoln resident, holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Nebraska. The panel also will include two speakers with extensive government experience: Kathleen Claussen, professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and a former associate general counsel for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative; and Angela Ellard, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who served for more than two decades as majority and minority chief trade counsel in the U.S. Congress before serving as deputy director-general of the World Trade Organization from 2021 to August 2025. 

Jill O’Donnell, the Yeutter Institute’s Haggart-Work Director, will moderate the third panel, focusing on “Path Dependency and the Future of Trade.” The panel will include Bob Koopman, Hurst Senior Professorial Lecturer at the American University School of International Service and former chief economist for the World Trade Organization, as well as Maria Pagan, former deputy U.S. trade representative and U.S. ambassador to the World Trade Organization and former deputy general counsel for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. 

The symposium is made possible by support from the CME Group Foundation.

The Yeutter Institute is named after Clayton Yeutter (1930-2017), a Eustis, Nebraska, native who served as the U.S. secretary of agriculture and the U.S. trade representative. Yeutter earned three degrees from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln — a Bachelor of Science, Juris Doctor and doctoral degree in agricultural economics.