[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15660-15661]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      TRIBUTE TO RAYMOND J. AHEARN

  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Hatch and myself, we 
wish to recognize the outstanding career of Mr. Raymond J. Ahearn, 
Specialist in International Trade and Finance with the Foreign Affairs, 
Defense and Trade Division of the Congressional Research Service (CRS). 
Ray will retire on December 28, after more than 37 years of 
distinguished government service.
  Mr. Ahearn began working as a trade and finance analyst at CRS in 
April 1975, soon after receiving his MA in international affairs from 
the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, SAIS. He 
later received his MA in economics from the George Washington 
University and also represented CRS at the National War College in 
Washington, DC, graduating in 1991.
  Upon joining CRS, Mr. Ahearn quickly established himself as a leading 
expert in U.S. trade policy. He wrote numerous reports and confidential 
memoranda and conducted hundreds of briefings for Members and 
congressional staff on a broad range of international economic issues. 
These issues addressed core topics on U.S. trade policy, such as U.S. 
trade laws to open markets for U.S. exporters, trade reorganization, 
the debate over free trade versus trade protectionism, and the future 
of U.S. trade policy. He also focused his authoritative and objective 
analysis on international financial issues, including the 2008 global 
financial crisis and the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis.
  Mr. Ahearn is well known for his expertise and deep institutional 
knowledge of the global trading system, particularly with respect to 
the World Trade Organization and related multilateral ``rounds'' of 
trade negotiations over the past 4 decades. More recently, he led 
important innovative research on rising economic powers and their trade 
policy implications for the United States. As a policy issue of growing 
congressional interest, his insightful analysis will continue to 
support Congress in understanding the transformative changes underway 
in the global economy.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise to join with Senator Baucus in 
commending Mr. Ahearn for his service. Over the years, Mr. Ahearn's 
impressive portfolio of work also examined major U.S. trading partner 
policies. Early on in his career, for example, he was a lead CRS expert 
on the U.S.-Japan trade and economic relationship during heightened 
trade tensions between our two countries. From September 1993 to August 
1994, he worked for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, USTR, 
to serve as Director of Trade Strategy for Japan and China. More 
recently, Ray became the ``go to'' CRS analyst on the U.S.-EU trade and 
economic relationship, writing reports and confidential memoranda and 
consulting Congress on numerous topics, including on the EU's 
preferential trade agreements and regulatory issues.
  Mr. Ahearn has been especially adept at examining complex issues in 
international economics of immediate importance to Congress and making 
his analysis accessible to an audience that approaches the issues with 
varying degrees of understanding. This skill has played an especially 
critical role in successfully conveying to Congress the complex, 
multidimensional challenges associated with globalization. For example, 
in 2009, Mr. Ahearn wrote a CRS

[[Page 15661]]

report titled The Global Economic Downturn and Protectionism that 
addressed the issue of the perceived and real growth of trade 
restrictions by the United States and its trading partners in response 
to the global economic crisis that emerged in 2008. In analyzing the 
issue, he constructed an analytical framework of three potential 
categories of restrictions that might be taken and the potential 
consequences of each. Mr. Ahearn applied a similar analysis in his 
timely CRS report Globalization, Worker Insecurity and Policy 
Approaches, which examined the complex relationship between the 
increased integration of the U.S. economy with the rest of the world 
and the decline in U.S. wages and worker security, an issue faced by 
all Members of Congress as they consider trade agreements and other 
global economic issues.
  We wish Mr. Ahearn the very best in his retirement and thank him for 
his exemplary record of service to Congress in directly supporting our 
work on international trade and finance policy issues.

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