Rufus Yerxa
American lawyer; former Chief International Counsel for Monsanto Company; former U.S. Trade representative
Rufus Hawkins Yerxa (born May 6, 1951) is a retired American lawyer and former U.S. government and international official. He served as Deputy United States Trade Representative during the George H.W. Bush and Clinton Administrations, and served for 11 years as Deputy Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO). From 2016 to 2021 he was President of the National Foreign Trade Council.
Education
Yerxa holds degrees from
University of Washington (BA), 1973
Seattle University (JD), 1976
University of Cambridge (LLB, International Law), 1977
Career
From 1977 to 1981 he was legal advisor to the chairman of the International Trade Commission. From 1981 to 1989 he was a staff member of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, serving as staff director of its Subcommittee on Trade and later as Assistant Chief Counsel of the full Committee.
From 1989 to 1995 he was a Deputy United States Trade Representative (USTR), serving first in Geneva as U.S. ambassador to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and subsequently as Deputy USTR in Washington. He played a key role in the Uruguay Round Negotiations, and was later responsible for overseeing the Clinton Administration's efforts to obtain Congressional approval of both NAFTA and the WTO Agreement. After leaving government service In the mid-1990s, he was a resident partner in the Brussels office of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, where his practice focused on international trade and European regulatory matters.
In 2002 he was appointed to serve as Deputy Director General of the WTO, a position he held until 2013. During this time he was also a lecturer on U.S. trade policy at the World Trade Institute (WTI) in Berne.
The public source identifies “Rufus Yerxa” as american lawyer; former Chief International Counsel for Monsanto Company; former U.S. Trade representative. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Rufus, Yerxa and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7378115. VIAF identifies the subject as 316008554. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1951, 2016, 2021 and 1973.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rufus Yerxa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.