Osvaldo Gómez-Martínez (PhD) is the Acting Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Africa. He previously served as Director for Industry Trade Policy in USTR’s Office of Small Business, Market Access and Industrial Competitiveness, where he was negotiating Co-Lead for FTA chapters on rules of origin, origin procedures and product-specific rules. Prior to joining USTR, Osvaldo was Director for the Office of Trade Policy and Geographic Affairs, New Technologies and Productions Methods Division within the U.S. Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS). From 2010-2014, he was a U.S. diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, contributing towards strengthening U.S. relations with foreign countries and multilateral organizations on a wide range of economic policy and programmatic areas.
As an Alternate Representative to the U.S. Permanent Mission to the Organization of American States (OAS) and negotiating member of the presidential Summit of the Americas U.S. team, Osvaldo spearheaded multilateral negotiations on a wide range of economic and national security issues. Throughout his tenure, Osvaldo successfully negotiated U.S. interests on political declarations and resolutions in five OAS Ministerials, four OAS General Assemblies and the 2012 and 2015 Summit of the Americas. As a Multilateral Affairs Officer for the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Counterterrorism Office of Multilateral Affairs, he was also responsible for coordinating the work of a federal inter-agency responsible for advancing U.S. policy and programmatic interests on economic-specific counterterrorism issues within the OAS, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Group of Eight (G8), and the United Nations Security Council Counterterrorism Committee (UN).
Outside of government service, Osvaldo was a Public Policy and International Affairs Fellow at the University of Michigan and a Penn Kemble Forum Democracy Fellow with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). He has studied abroad at the American University of Paris, the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the Center for Economic Research and Education in Mexico City. He received his PhD in economics from the University of Cambridge, his Master’s degree in international affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and his dual Bachelor’s degree in international political economy and comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley. Osvaldo is from Napa, California and has lived in Washington D.C. since 2010.
