Naoto (Nelson) Saika

Naoto (Nelson) Saika is an associate in the Firm's Global International Trade Practice and is based in the Washington, DC office. He works on various trade issues, including matters relating to trade remedies (antidumping duty/countervailing duty), customs, and World Trade Organization (WTO) law, for both sovereign and private clients.

Nelson has helped clients around the world in US trade remedy proceedings, such as working with clients to prepare responses to various questionnaires issued by the US Department of Commerce in antidumping duty investigations. He works with clients in diverse industries, including those relating to steel and nonferrous metals. With his knowledge of the United States' and other countries' domestic trade remedy practices and WTO law, he also supports sovereign clients with reviewing and developing their own trade remedy practices.

His work also covers delving into cutting-edge issues and writing research papers for clients, assessing the issues for WTO-consistency. Those issues relate to, among others, carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), renewable energy subsidies, and mega free trade agreements (FTA) like the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for a Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

Nelson is a native speaker of Japanese. Prior to joining the Firm, he worked in the agriculture industry as an international grain trader for a Japanese multi-national corporation. As such, he is intimately familiar with Japanese business culture. He has also interned at the WTO Appellate Body Secretariat, assisting in appeals concerning issues relating to the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the Agreement on Implementation of Article VI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 (Antidumping Agreement). He is also published in a leading academic journal in the field of international trade law, writing on sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) issues.