APEC: A Preview of the Honolulu Summit

On January 11, 2011, Sasakawa USA welcomed the Honorable Kurt Tong for a private, off-the-record discussion on the upcoming APEC summit in November.

About the Speaker

Ambassador Kurt Tong is the U.S. Senior Official for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), managing all aspects of U.S. participation in APEC. He is also the Economic Coordinator for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, organizing bureau-wide efforts on economic policy issues.

Ambassador Tong has spent 17 years working and studying in East Asia, including service at the U.S. Embassies in Manila, Tokyo, Beijing and Seoul. Most recently, he served as Director for Korean Affairs at the Department of State from 2008 to 2009. Prior to that, he was Director for Asian Economic Affairs at the National Security Council from 2006 to 2008. He was also a Visiting Scholar at the Tokyo University Faculty of Economics from 1995 to 1996. Before joining the Foreign Service, Ambassador Tong was an Associate with the Boston Consulting Group in Tokyo. He holds a B.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and studied graduate-level economics at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute.