Robert Lighthizer Blew Up 60 Years of Trade Policy. Nobody Knows What Happens Next – By Lydia DePillis (ProPublica) / Oct 13 2020
Trump’s trade representative joined the administration with one mission: Bring factory jobs back from overseas. The results so far? Endless trade wars, alienated allies, and a manufacturing recession.
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On a spring day in 2017, Robert Lighthizer walked through the doors of the office of the United States Trade Representative to introduce himself to the career staff who had shepherded American trade policy for a generation. After a chaotic few months awaiting Lighthizer’s confirmation, officials were eager for stability; Lighthizer offered deep expertise in a cabinet full of government neophytes. As a Washington operative with years of experience in international trade, he seemed like the best appointment they were likely to get under the circumstances.
There was, nonetheless, considerable apprehension among the few hundred USTR staff gathered in the auditorium. President Donald Trump had built his campaign on scathing criticism of the treaties the people in the room had forged over years of hard work. “Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people,” Trump had said, the very first time he rode down the escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy. “But we have people that are stupid.”
Lighthizer offered a conciliatory tone at that first meeting — acknowledging, one official said, “that he would have a different approach that some of us might disagree with, but that he would be open to hearing our views.’’ Remembered another: “He set out the broad goals of righting the wrongs that had been visited upon us but also tried to be reassuring and respectful of staff capabilities.”
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