Fisher, from 1997 to 2001, was Deputy United States Trade Representative (USTR) with the rank of Ambassador. During this period, Ambassador Fisher oversaw trade policy for Asia and the Pacific and the Americas. He represented the U.S. at both the 1999 New Zealand and 2000 Australia Ministerial meetings of the 21-member states of APEC.

Ambassador Fisher negotiated the U.S.-Korea Auto Agreement of 1998; the U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement, which was signed by President Bush in 2001; and the initiation of the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement. He was a member of the team that negotiated the U.S.-China agreement for Chinese accession to the World Trade Organization and, separately, the bilateral aspects of Taiwan's accession. He chaired the American delegation for the Enhanced Initiative on Competition and Deregulation of the Japanese Economy for three years, an exercise that resulted in significant changes in the structure of Japan's telecommunications (the deregulation of NTT's telephone monopoly), housing, energy, health care, retailing (the "Large Scale Retail Store Law"), and financial sectors.

Fisher was the chief operating officer of the U.S. government for NAFTA, the largest trading relationship of the U.S., accounting for 40% of U.S. exports and 30% of U.S. imports. He had oversight responsibilities for the development of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, representing the U.S. at the Ministerial (Cabinet) level for multilateral negotiations with the 33 Latin and Caribbean nations involved. He negotiated numerous high-profile issues throughout the hemisphere, including the deregulation of Telmex, the removal of Canadian restrictions on U.S. magazine publications, the protection of U.S. companies' intellectual property rights in Argentina and Brazil, and the initiation of the U.S.-Chile Free Trade Agreement.

Before joining USTR, Mr. Fisher was managing partner of Value Partners Ltd. and Fisher Capital Management from 1987 through 1997. With $500 million in equity capital, both firms specialized in buying claims to publicly-traded assets selling significantly below true value in securities markets of the U.S., Europe and throughout Asia. (Mr. Fisher resided in Tokyo in 1990.)

Previously, Mr. Fisher was senior manager of Brown Brothers Harriman and Co., where he began his career in 1975 specializing in fixed income and foreign exchange markets.

Mr. Fisher is a first generation American. He is equally fluent in Spanish and English, having spent his formative years in Mexico. He attended the U.S. Naval Academy (1967-1969), graduated with honors from Harvard in economics (1971), read Latin American history at Oxford (1972-1973), and received an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business (1975).

"Richard W. Fisher, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, received The American Assembly’s Service to Democracy Award at a dinner in his honor on October 18, 2006, at the James M. Collins Executive Education Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas." [1]