Practitioner Profile: Ryan Majerus

Few practitioners today have followed trade’s evolution into a national security tool as closely as King & Spalding LLP partner Ryan Majerus, who joined the firm this year after more than a decade spent bouncing between the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the White House. 

The Export Practitioner sat down with the former Acting Assistant Secretary for Enforcement & Compliance for a conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, covering seismic tariff shifts, supply chains risks and taking an interdisciplinary approach to international trade.

The Export Practitioner:  Nice to meet you.

Ryan Majerus: Nice to meet you as well.

So you have been at K&S for nine months now, coming from the International Trade Administration, and you made a pit stop at the White House between ITA assignments.

Majerus: That’s right. So, I spent 13 years in the federal government. I started as a career civil servant at the Department of Justice, where I did some trade stuff, but a lot of government contracts litigation, and then I shifted over to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in August 2016 at the height of Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations when Ambassador Froman was the USTR. I stayed the entirety of the first Trump term, so I did a huge mix of things there. 

Then I took a brief hiatus from trade going to the Department of Agriculture where I led the appellate litigation for the agency and loved that job. We had a couple active Supreme Court cases, which was pretty thrilling to work on. 

But then, when Biden won the election in 2020, I had an opportunity to shift into political roles. So that's what led me to move away from civil service into a political appointee role. I started at Commerce as one of the first deputy assistant secretary appointees before Gina Raimondo became confirmed as the secretary. That job is not confirmed, so I was able to come in just a couple weeks after the inauguration. I started in that role and elevated from there.

My focus at Commerce was heavily on anti-dumping countervailing duties, but also a lot of steel issues, and a lot of domestic manufacturing and supply chain issues, and I pivoted over to the White House a couple years in, to do supply chain and steel work exclusively under NEC Director Lael Brainard.

I was called back to Commerce when my boss at the agency, Assistant Secretary Lisa Wang, was confirmed as a judge at the Court of International Trade.

While at Commerce, you were instrumental in crafting rules that updated and kind of reconfigured AD/CVD regulations.

Majerus: The time I was at Commerce was interesting because I was the official signatory for several regulatory packages. The folks that work in Enforcement & Compliance are always looking for ways to improve how these laws function. It really is a bipartisan issue. 

The first Trump administration had a package that made efforts to streamline and make more efficient the circumvention laws and a whole host of other procedural functions, called AB 10. That was continued by the Biden administration when I was at the Department of Commerce and signed off by us. Separately, we also had significant new regulations, called AB 23 and AB 25. 

AB 23 involved lifting a regulation with respect to transnational subsidies to create more of an avenue for folks to bring claims. We also provided clarity on particular market situation for folks in terms of what the agency would be looking at, and then a whole host of other changes, really trying to create more tools for the Department of Commerce to go after unfair trade.

When AB23 came out, all anyone wanted to talk about was transnational subsidies. How have you seen it play out? I don't know if it's been as active as I would've guessed.

These things take time. What really distinguishes the AD/CVD laws from a lot of the tariff news dominating the headlines is that they are driven by industry. It's a set of tools for industry to combat unfair trade based on the facts, based on the record. So we haven't seen the story really unfold yet in terms of what the transnational subsidies decisions are going to look like. But the intent behind the regulations was to create more opportunities for both the agency and domestic industry to level the playing field.

Jumping back to the beginning of your trade career,  since you were in USTR during the first Trump administration, what do you see as the key differences in approach this time around?

Majerus: A lot of core issues that drove what the first Trump administration and [former USTR] Ambassador Lighthizer pursued still apply to what we're seeing now. There are really three or four pillars:

It's a desire to bring back good-paying manufacturing jobs to the U.S.; to deal with these persistent, unfair trade practices that we've seen for decades; and then I think a new dimension of this, of course, is the desire to bring in tariff revenue. 

The key difference is that they're being far more aggressive this time around. And one of the obvious differences is in the first term, they looked to Sections 232 and 301, which are laws on the books that involve degrees of inviting comments from interested parties, and potentially having a hearing, then issuing a report. The current administration, at least for a portion of the tariffs, opted to use IEEPA, based on national emergencies, to impose tariffs very quickly. 

One of the other really big differences, from my perspective, is in the first term they had this very expansive exclusions process for steel tariffs under Section 232, which I think grew to a degree folks weren't expecting. This time around you're seeing more of a desire to put tariffs in place and be more guarded about exclusions to avoid watering down the remedy.

Since the White House is focusing on emergencies this time around, and you previously advised the White House on supply chains, what do you think is the biggest threat to U.S. supply chains right now?

Majerus: It's a great question. When I was in the Biden administration, we dealt with a variety of port closures and supply chain shocks in specific sectors — and I don't doubt this administration is grappling with those issues in the Old Executive Building and beyond — but I think a lot of this is going to depend on how the tariffs land. 

The issue is what will be the longer-term impacts of all the various tariffs that the administration is pursuing. Are they going to cause supply chain challenges in particular sectors? How's the administration going to deal with that? They've looked to negotiating with our allies and our trading partners as part of their IEEPA reciprocal tariffs and fentanyl tariffs, so I think they're taking into account the supply chain risks that they're experiencing in those discussions.

Several media outlets have sought you out for commentary on the IEEPA tariff litigation recently, so I’ll also ask: Where would you put your money in terms of outcomes and timelines?

 It's hard to put your money on what the result is going to be here. I do think it'll be very close — it's one of the most important cases of the Supreme Court's term. The case deals with a lot of really challenging and important issues, including separation of powers: How do you read the statutory language in IEEPA in terms of the reach? Does it include authorization to impose tariffs? Then there are things like the non-delegation and the major questions doctrines. There are obviously injunction issues that are at play here as well.

So there's a lot for the court to sort out. Given we had a 7-4 decision at the Federal Circuit, but a 65-page dissent, underscores how close this is going to be.

Tell me more about the Supreme Court appeals you led at the USDA.

Majerus:  Most of my day work at USDA involved a range of appeals across the country. I was the point person for every appeal that USDA was involved in, and it’s a huge agency. It's the second largest [civilian] land management agency in the federal government. But the one I worked on the most, which was fascinating, was [United States Forest Service, et al. v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association, et al.,] a case involving the Appalachian Trail and an oil pipeline below part of it. 

It got into really interesting issues about designated land, whether it was Forest Service or Park Service land, and kind of felt like going back to my property law class at Georgetown. One of the things that I've really enjoyed about my career is I've been able to dive into the substance on a lot of different subject areas: certainly trade, but also government contracts and more general civil litigation. So it was fun to step into an appellate-focused role that did not involve trade and grapple with a lot of complex issues. And obviously anything that gets to the Supreme Court is going to be incredibly intellectually stimulating.

 I'm curious how that kind of interdisciplinary experience informs your practice right now, as we are seeing trade merge to some extent with national security and government contracting. Even land issues are becoming more of an international trade topic.

Majerus:  I think that's exactly right. We've really seen a lot of these areas merge together.  Certainly with government contracts, with all the emphasis on industrial policy and Buy America, we've seen that discipline and trade move much closer to one another.

 Going back to the first Trump term — looking at the use of authorities like Sections 301 and 232 and the national security dimensions to some of those investigations — up to now, we’ve increasingly seen the trade policy tools that both sides have been looking at expand and cover different areas. 

My experience has been helpful because I'm able to look at issues through multiple lenses. The appellate work I did is helpful as I think about what's happening now with the IEEPA tariffs and advise clients. At the firm we often talk about majors and minors, and I kind of feel like these other areas have been an effective minor for me.