Prior he served as
Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment (at the time, entitled Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs) from 2009 to 2013. Hormats was formerly
Vice Chairman of
Goldman Sachs (International), which he joined in 1982. He served as Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary, from 1977 to 1979, and Assistant Secretary of State, from 1981 to 1982, at the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs (formerly
Bureau of Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs). He was Ambassador and Deputy
United States Trade Representative from 1979 to 1981. He served as a senior staff member for International Economic Affairs on the
United States National Security Council from 1969 to 1977, where he was senior economic adviser to
Henry Kissinger, General
Brent Scowcroft and
Zbigniew Brzezinski. He helped to manage the
Nixon administration's opening of diplomatic relations with China's communist government. He was a recipient of the
French Legion of Honor in 1982 and the
Arthur S. Flemming Award in 1974. Hormats has been a visiting lecturer at
Princeton University and served on the Board of Visitors of the
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at
Tufts University and the Dean’s Council of the
John F. Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard University. He played a role in the founding of the
Center for International Education (CIE) at the
Washington International School. He is a member of
Securing America's Future Energy (SAFE), the
Economic Club of New York, the
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the
Irvington Institute for Immunological Research,
Engelhard Corporation, and a former member of the
Rockefeller Center Club, the
Pacific Council on Foreign Policy, and
Freedom House. Hormats is also a member of board of directors of the
Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) Hormats has been a guest scholar at the
Brookings Institution and a visiting lecturer at
Princeton University. He is a member of the
Trilateral Commission and is on the board of directors of the
Hungarian-American Enterprise Fund, and the
Council on Foreign Relations, as well as being on the board of overseers of
Tufts University. Hormats is a member of the Atlantic Council' s Board of Directors.
Points of view Hormats has been a supporter of legislation that would increase investments in
infrastructure in America through a national bank that would develop
public-private partnerships for large transportation projects. "It's a high national priority," Hormats told
Congressional Quarterly in March 2008. "Public-private cooperation is a really critical part. The needs are urgent." He and others argue that U.S.
transportation infrastructure has lagged behind foreign competitors. Unless the country picks up the pace, it will not be able to support its growing trade and population. He is an advocate of enhancing intelligence capabilities, modernizing military equipment and spending more money on preparing first-responders like firemen and emergency medical technicians for crises. He worries that future presidential administrations will spend less than they should on homeland security because to do so will require raising taxes or cutting non-defense programs. He also worries that the unpopularity of the Iraq war will cause the country to reduce its military presence overseas. Hormats has argued that China and America are financially intertwined. It would not be in China’s financial interest, he argued, to destabilize the dollar by recalling the country’s vast loans to the U.S. Doing so would result in a shrunken export market for China. Hormats calls this MAD—mutually assured depression. In 2004, the government fined Goldman Sachs $2 million for illegally and selectively promoting the stock of four Asian companies that were about to go public. According to the
Securities and Exchange Commission, Hormats and others "made illegal offerings of securities to select customers in 1999 and 2000 and made inappropriate statements to the press." Hormats told four media outlets that
PetroChina, a Chinese-based oil producer, was not invested in
Darfur. The disclosure was illegal under SEC rules, because the company had not yet gone public, and Hormats would not have been allowed to comment until it had done so. ==Personal life==