Inu Manak

Inu Manak has been a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics since 2026. She is an expert in international trade law and policy, with a focus on trade institutions, economic history, American political thought, and the political economy of open markets. Her research examines how trade institutions evolve and how governments shape and sustain support for trade liberalization in advanced economies. Manak is regularly called on to speak about US trade policy, the World Trade Organization, North American integration, industrial policy, and development. 

Previously, Manak was a senior fellow for international trade at the Council on Foreign Relations, a research fellow at the Cato Institute's Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, and a junior visiting fellow at the Centre for Trade and Economic Integration at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. She was also an inaugural participating scholar in the Robert A. Pastor North America Research Initiative at American University in 2017. 

She is a book review editor for World Trade Review and associate editor of the International Economic Law and Policy Blog. She serves on the advisory board of the Center on Inclusive Trade and Development at Georgetown Law.

Her work has been published in journals such as the Journal of International Economic Law, World Trade Review, Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law, Georgetown Journal of International Law, and American Review of Canadian Studies. In 2021, she coauthored The Development Dimension: Special and Differential Treatment in Trade (Routledge Focus) with James Bacchus. She is currently writing a book about US trade policy's bipartisan shift toward protectionism. Her commentary has appeared in The Detroit News, The National Interest, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Hill, Policy Options, TIME, US News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

Manak holds a PhD in government from Georgetown University, a MA in international affairs from American University's School of International Service, and a BA in political science (First Class Honors) from Simon Fraser University.