Robert B Zoellick

In naming Robert B. Zoellick to be his chief trade advisor, President-elect George W. Bush on Thursday hired a former employee of his father who is known for combining brainy analysis with smooth negotiating skills. Bush also made clear that the job of U.S. trade representative--contrary to earlier reports--would not be downgraded and would remain at the senior level of his administration, which will inherit an array of unfinished trade issues involving Europe, Latin America and Asia.

President-elect George W. Bush completed the selection of his Cabinet on Thursday, naming a Taiwanese immigrant to be Labor secretary and a key policy advisor in the previous Bush administration as the nation's trade negotiator. Bush chose Elaine Chao--former head of the Peace Corps, a deputy Transportation secretary a decade ago and the wife of a Republican senator--to lead the Labor Department. He first had offered the job to Linda Chavez, who withdrew this week. He named Robert B.

He is, they say, one lobe of Jim Baker's brain--the consummate inside strategist who provides the ideas and intellectual underpinning for the programs that James A. Baker III has advanced, first as secretary of the Treasury and now as secretary of state. So the nomination of Robert B. Zoellick to be undersecretary of state for economic affairs has caused Washington insiders to take notice. A job that has been something of a bureaucratic backwater is about to become much more important.