Fran Smith

Board Member and Adjunct Fellow

Frances B. Smith is currently an Adjunct Fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on trade and international issues affecting consumers. She is also the founder and coordinator of International Consumers for Civil Society, an umbrella group that has 24 non-profit organization members in 13 countries around the world and is an NGO with several international organizations. Smith served from 1994 - 2005 as Executive Director of Consumer Alert, a national consumer group. She received an appointment to the U.S. Trade Representative’s Trade and Environmental Policy Advisory Committee, which reviews and comments on trade agreements and related matters involving the U.S. She also served a 4-year appointment on the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine’s Food Forum.

Smith has testified before Congressional committees and regulatory agencies, has been a participant in numerous public meetings of regulatory agencies, and has commented on regulatory issues both domestically and internationally. She was a contributing editor at Consumers’ Research magazine and has had articles and letters published in the Legal Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, USA Today, Detroit News, Investor's Business Daily, Journal of Commerce, Washington Post, Washington Times, New York Times, and other newspapers. She also is the author of a widely distributed monograph on the Biosafety Protocol.

Before joining Consumer Alert in 1994, Smith was an executive and officer of a major financial services trade association, where she also founded a non-profit foundation that produced an award-winning documentary on personal bankruptcy. In an earlier position, she was the founding editor of an award-winning banking journal, the Journal of Retail Banking.

A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, Smith holds a B.A. from the University of New Orleans and an M.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

recent op-eds & articles

The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Deserves a Vote
By Marcela Prieto, Fran Smith, August 11, 2008

Federal Ethanol Mandates Will Plow Us All Under
By Fran Smith, November 5, 2007

Nothing Sweet about It
By Fran Smith, July 16, 2007

Is the U.S. Sugar Problem Solvable?
By Barbara Rippel, Fran Smith, Ivan Osorio, April 20, 2006

» Read more op-eds & articles.

recent studies

The United States-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Deserves a Vote
By Fran Smith, Ryan Young, July 2, 2008

Corn-Based Ethanol
By Fran Smith, June 14, 2007

CAFTA-DR: Can Free Trade Hold Up to Special Interest Siege? by Frances B. Smith
By Fran Smith, May 26, 2005

The human costs of global warming policy
By Fran Smith, October 1, 1997

» Read more studies.