Daniel Gordon Amstutz (November 8, 1932 – March 20, 2006) was an American government official and business executive who played a prominent role during negotiation of the Uruguay Round of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade rules on agriculture, and in the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
[1] After graduating from Ohio State University in 1954, Amstutz joined Cargill, where he began in grain trading, eventually heading the wheat desk.
He was persuaded to join Goldman Sachs by its top management who, having bought a metals trading company, were looking for someone to provide direction about ways to operate in futures.
According to the paper, "Kevin Watkins, Oxfam's policy director, said Mr Amstutz would 'arrive with a suitcase full of open-market rhetoric', and was more likely to try to dump cheap US grain on the potentially lucrative Iraqi market than encourage the country to rebuild its once-successful agricultural sector.
Putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a human rights commission...This guy is uniquely well-placed to advance the commercial interests of American grain companies and bust open the Iraqi market - but singularly ill-equipped to lead a reconstruction effort in a developing country.