Sidney Weintraub (/ˈwaɪntrɑːb/; 18 May 1922, New York City – 10 April 2014, Cuernavaca, Mexico) was an economist, foreign service officer, professor, non-fiction author, and novelist.
After leaving U.S. government service, he was the Dean Rusk Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs from 1976 to 1994; emeritus thereafter) and holder of the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., from 1994 to 2011.
[1] In Chile from 1966-1969 (during the Christian Democratic presidency of Eduardo Frei), he was simultaneously Economic Counselor of the US Embassy and head of the AID mission.
[1][3][4] In Mexican Slay Ride - set in Mexico where Weintraub had been a diplomat - Barber seeks a woman's killers, eventually uncovering a drug smuggling ring.
[7] His work on Mexican political economy and U.S.-Mexican relations was influential and, among other things, helped lay the intellectual foundations for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
In 2006 the Mexican government awarded him the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest decoration granted by Mexico to foreigners.