Edgar B. Brossard
Edgar B. Brossard served with the U.S. Tariff Commission for 36 years and was its chairman during the Republican Hoover and Eisenhower administrations.
At the time of his retirement in 1959, President Eisenhower referred to him as "an example of the highest dedication" to the public service.
He was born on April 1, 1889, on a cattle range at Oxford, Idaho, and moved with his family as a boy to Logan, Utah. He graduated from Utah State University in 1911 and earned a master's degree and doctorate from the University of Minnesota (1917, 1920). He also studied at Cornell University.
In 1914, under the direction of the Department of Agriculture and the Utah Agricultural College, he led a farm management program designed to teach farmers how to better manage their finances.
He began his federal government career in 1917 as an employee of the Agriculture Department. He was appointed from civil service rolls as an economist on the Tariff Commission staff in 1923.
Two years later, President Coolidge appointed him a member of the bipartisan Tariff Commission. He was reappointed by presidents Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower.
He had served as an alternate U.S. delegate to the 1947 Geneva and 1948 Havana International Conferences on Trade and Employment and as an official delegate to the 1956 Geneva Conference. He also was chairman of the Committee for Reciprocity Information and a member of the Interdepartmental Committee on Trade Agreements.
Brossard had served as a member of the Interdepartmental Committee on Inter-American Affairs and of the executive committee of the Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation.
After his retirement, Brossard served as president of the New England Mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He also served in the Paris France Mission for two years to resolve problems in the mission that had occurred. In 1913, he had been serving as a missionary in the Swiss-German mission when he was asked to preside over the newly organized Paris, France Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ. When he returned to Salt Lake City, he served on the Sunday School general board, as a bishop, and as a worker in the Salt Lake Temple.
His wife, Laura, died in 1976. Eleanor Knowles wrote their biography entitled, The Biographies of Edgar B. Brossard and Laura Cowley Brossard. He died on August 23, 1980.
