Jonathan T. Fried

Jonathan Fried is a senior adviser with Bennett Jones, LLP, in Ottawa and the Albright Stonebridge Group in Washington, D.C., and adviser to Independent Economics Consulting in London, United Kingdom. Prior to his retirement from the government of Canada in August 2020, he was coordinator for international economic relations, with a mandate encompassing Canada–Asia and international trade and economic policy, and concurrently the personal representative of Prime Minister Trudeau for the G20 from 2017 to 2020. From mid-2021 to February 2022, he served part-time as an executive adviser to Global Affairs Canada on the development of a Canadian Indo-Pacific strategy. Mr. Fried was Canada’s ambassador to the WTO from 2012 to 2017, where he was chair of the WTO’s General Council (2014) and of the Dispute Settlement Body (2013). Mr. Fried was formerly Canada’s ambassador to Japan; executive director for Canada, Ireland, and the Caribbean at the IMF; senior foreign policy adviser to the prime minister; senior assistant deputy minister for the Department of Finance and Canada's G7 and G20 finance deputy, and earlier chief negotiator on China’s WTO accession; and chief counsel for NAFTA. Mr. Fried is a distinguished fellow of the Asia-Pacific Foundation and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. He serves on the board of directors of the Health Standards Organization, serves on the advisory boards of the World Trade Board and the Central and East European Law Institute, and is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Trade Action Group. He was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun by Japan in November 2022 and was the inaugural recipient of the Public Sector Lawyer Award by the Canadian Council on International Law in 2015 to honor his service and contribution to public international law. Mr. Fried received his BA and LLB from the University of Toronto and LLM from Columbia University.