Frank Lavin

Frank Lavin is a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and serves as a Trustee of the Asia Foundation, as well as a Director of the Asia Society of Northern California.

Lavin was the Under Secretary for International Trade at the US Department of Commerce during the Bush (43) Administration, where he acted as the lead trade negotiator for both China and India and oversaw commercial policy, export promotion, and global trade negotiations. Prior to that, he was the US Ambassador to Singapore, where he played a key role in negotiating the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement. Lavin also served in the Bush (41) and Reagan Administrations, working in the Department of Commerce, Department of State, National Security Council, and White House. In the Reagan Administration, Lavin served as White House Political Director.

In the private sector, Lavin served in senior finance and management positions in Hong Kong and Singapore with Bank of America and Citibank. From 2011 to 2023, he was the CEO of Export Now, a firm that supports US brands in China.

Lavin is a columnist for Forbes.com and has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and more. He is the author of Inside the Reagan White House, The Smart Business Guide to China E-Commerce, co-author of Export Now and author of Home Front to Battlefront, a World War II history book.

Lavin is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the Advisory Board of ECIPE, a think tank based in Brussels. He has taken part in two humanitarian missions to Ukraine. He formerly served as Lieutenant Commander in the US Naval Reserves.

Lavin earned a BS from the School of Foreign Service and an MS in Chinese Language and History (both Georgetown). He also holds an MA in International Relations and International Economics from SAIS (Johns Hopkins) and an MBA in Finance from Wharton (University of Pennsylvania).