Damon V. Pike JD

Damon V. Pike is President of Global Trade Strategies, Inc., a consulting firm headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, which specializes in customs and international trade regulation. The firm helps multinational companies navigate the complex rules governing the cross-border movement of goods and services, with the goal of minimizing duty, VAT, and excise tax payments, while maximizing corporate trade compliance to eliminate the risk of costly and time-consuming audits, investigations, and penalty cases. Special emphasis (for which Mr. Pike is a recognized global authority) is placed on harmonizing income tax transfer pricing policies vis-à-vis customs valuation requirements as part of designing in-house customs and trade compliance programs. The firm also has a well-established informal network of customs and trade advisors in every major trading jurisdiction to deliver results no matter where issues surface.

Prior to launching his own firm in 2006, Mr. Pike spent 13 years with Deloitte (the world’s largest professional services firm), which tenure included a four-year term as National Director of Customs Services. From 1990-1993, he was an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of the Atlanta-based law firm of Kilpatrick & Cody (now Kilpatrick Townsend), where he specialized in antidumping and countervailing duty actions. Mr. Pike also has experience in the legislative and judicial branches of the federal government. He served as a law clerk to the Honorable R. Kenton Musgrave at the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York City, and worked on the Capitol Hill staff of U.S. Congressman (and later U.S. Senator) James T. Broyhill of North Carolina.

Mr. Pike is admitted to the Bars of Georgia, North Carolina, and the District of Columbia, as well as to the U.S. Court of International Trade, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Pike is a licensed U.S. Customhouse broker and belongs to the Customs and International Trade Bar Association and the International Compliance Professionals Association. From 1997-2006, he served on the Exporters’ Textile Advisory Committee upon appointment by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. In 2015, the Secretary appointed Mr. Pike to a 3-year term on the District Export Council for the State of Georgia. Mr. Pike also served on the Advisory Board of the Georgetown University Law Center’s annual International Trade Update from 2006-2015. He is an Adjunct Professor of Law at Emory University in Atlanta, where he teaches “Customs Law.” His textbook of the same name (the first of its kind in the U.S.) was published by the Carolina Academic Press in 2012. He was Chair of the Customs Law Committee of the International Law Section of the American Bar Association from 2011-2013.

Mr. Pike earned his undergraduate degree with honors from Duke University in 1984, having also studied international business at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and at the Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen, Germany. Mr. Pike received a postgraduate fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service for study at the University of Regensburg, Germany. He obtained his law degree from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1989.