Tori Smith
Senior Vice President
Tori leads FTP's trade practice and is a leading expert on tariffs, trade, and economic policy, a former trade economist and Republican Senate advisor who now guides companies through the most consequential trade era in a generation.
Tori is a senior vice president in FTP’s federal government relations practice. She helps clients navigate significant trade policy exposure, including Section 232 and 301 investigations, domestic content and de minimis rules, and the trade agreements that govern global commerce. For manufacturers, importers, and exporters exposed to tariffs and trade actions, she builds strategies tailored to each client’s manufacturing footprint and political reach, identifying champions who will carry a company’s case.
She orchestrates strategies that engage Republican congressional leaders and members of the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees, as well as decision makers at USTR, Commerce, Treasury, and the White House to move outcomes in her clients’ favor. One of the country’s leading conservative experts on trade, Tori spent nearly a decade at the Heritage Foundation, where she rose to lead its trade policy work as the Jay Van Andel trade economist, before directing international economic policy at the American Action Forum.
She has published extensively on tariffs, Buy American laws, and the economic impact of trade barriers on American businesses and consumers. Tori took her expertise to Capitol Hill as a tax and trade advisor to Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) of the Senate Finance Committee, drafting tax legislation and helping shape the senator’s positions across the committee’s trade and tax jurisdiction. She authors “Trade Winds,” FTP’s guide to the fast-moving trade landscape, and is a frequent television commentator and widely published author.
Tori works alongside the firm’s national security and regional practices on trade exposure facing clients across borders, including the USMCA review that will shape the future of North American trade and national security. A native Michigander who began her career as a legislative aide in the Michigan House of Representatives, she holds a B.A. in International Relations from Michigan State University and an M.A. in International Commerce and Policy from George Mason University.
