Michael Froman

Michael Braverman Goodman Froman (born August 20, 1962) is an American lawyer who is the current president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Froman served as the U.S. Trade Representative from 2013 to 2017. He was Assistant to the President of the United States and Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs, a position held jointly at the National Security Council and the National Economic Council. In that position he served as the United States sherpa to the G7, G8, and G20 summits of economic powers. On May 2, 2013, President Barack Obama nominated him to succeed Ambassador Ron Kirk as the U.S. Trade Representative. He was confirmed on June 19, 2013. Early life and education Froman grew up in a Jewish family in San Rafael and graduated from the Branson School. As a teen, Froman was active in the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization, serving as the 56th International President in 1980. He later spoke at the BBYO International Convention in Washington, D.C., in February 2013. Froman received an A.B. in Public and International Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University with a senior thesis entitled Negotiating from Strength: The Principle of Power in US-Soviet Arms Control in 1985, a DPhil in International Relations entitled The development of the idea of detente in American political discourse, 1952-1985, supervised by Sir Michael Howard, from St Antony's College, Oxford, in 1988 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School where he was a classmate of Barack Obama, and also where he was an associate of Obama on the Harvard Law Review. Career Froman served as liaison of the American Bar Association's Central and East European Law Initiative (CEELI) legal assistance program in Albania. He was also a member of the Forward Studies Unit of the European Commission in Brussels.