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The Curb Center

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Carol Balassa » Carol Balassa

Carol Balassa has had a diverse career in the Office of the United States Trade Representative (1980 – 2007) where she has led numerous trade negotiations on audiovisual, telecommunications, and energy services. Highlights of her negotiating career follow: In 1980, based on extensive industry interviews and analytical research, Ms. Balassa prepared the first U.S. Government report describing the range of trade barriers confronting U.S. motion picture exports. The study established the industry’s agenda for international trade negotiations in the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations. In the mid-1980’s, branching into telecommunications trade issues in the U.S.-Israel and U.S. Canada Free Trade Area negotiations, Ms. Balassa went on to head the U.S. telecommunications services delegation to the GATS and negotiated a Telecommunications Annex to that agreement (1987-88). The Annex established international trade rules that guaranteed U.S. companies use of telecommunications in the conduct of their business abroad. Ms. Balassa added energy services to her portfolio in 2001.  She led the U.S. delegation on Energy Services to the World Trade Organization, where she successfully negotiated a Scheduling Guideline for Energy Services. The Scheduling Guideline is currently being used as a basis for negotiating energy services commitments in the ongoing Doha Round of trade negotiations. Concurrent with her work on energy services in the Doha Round, Ms. Balassa also led the U.S. delegation in negotiating an agreement on sensitive audiovisual services among key trading partners that served as a basis for plurilateral negotiations of audiovisual services. During this period, Ms. Balassa also served as a member of the U.S. delegation to UNESCO, where she brought a trade perspective to development of U.S. negotiating position on the Cultural Diversity Convention. Ms. Balassa is the author of several works relating to trade, including The Attitude of French Industry towards the Common Market, “Trade Issues in the Motion Picture Industry,” “Services in the U.S.-Israel Free Trade Negotiations,” “Liberalizing International Trade in Telecommunications Services,” and “International Cooperation to Improve Trade Rules.” A  native of New York City, where she received her B.A. degree (magna cum laude) from Queens College, Ms. Balassa went on to take her M.A. Degree in International Relations from Yale University and her Ph.D. Degree in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins University. Ms. Balassa is currently working on a proposal that stems from the report she wrote for the Curb Center, America’s Image Abroad: U.S. Motion Picture Exports and the UNESCO Cultural Diversity Convention.  The proposal is entitled “The Business of International Film Distribution: Pilot Proposal for a U.S.-Sponsored Capacity-Building Program.”

Barry
Elizabeth S. Meadows

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 4th, 2013 at 1:53 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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