Newly confirmed Lighthizer promises ‘more muscular’ approach to trade

May 15, 2017

Robert Lighthizer has long complained that the United States dithered in the face of abusive Chinese trade policies, allowing its trade gap with Beijing to explode and American factories to close. Now, the veteran trade lawyer will get a chance to do something about it.

The Senate voted 82-14 Thursday to confirm the 69-year-old Lighthizer to serve as U.S. trade representative. The job will empower him to renegotiate and enforce trade deals, many of which the new president has condemned as destroyers of American jobs.

A fixture in Washington trade policy circles for nearly four decades, Lighthizer has built a reputation as a shrewd negotiator. And like the president who chose him, Lighthizer represents a departure for a Republican Party that for decades favoured the free flow of global trade as a boon to economic growth...

His nomination sends another signal that the Trump administration intends to upend decades of U.S. policy and act aggressively to block imports when it deems other countries to be acting unfairly...

Lighthizer’s philosophy...essentially boils down to: “How can we afford to be unilateral free traders when the Chinese don’t reciprocate?”...

Supporters of free trade, such as analysts at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, argue that a Trump-Lighthizer combative approach could backfire. Blocking or taxing imports would raise prices of imports for American consumers and provoke retaliation. The result could potentially be a trade war that would hurt U.S. farmers and companies from Boeing to Caterpillar that depend on exports.

Drawing from experience in trade law and his work in the Reagan administration in countering Japanese imports, Lighthizer will likely try to force China and other competitors to end what the Trump team sees as unfair trade.

Lighthizer won’t be the administration’s only trade policy heavyweight. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, a billionaire investor, is expected to involve himself in trade issues, including an effort to renegotiate NAFTA. And Peter Navarro, a vociferous critic of China, is advising the White House on trade...

This is excerpted from 12 May 2017 edition of The Associated Press.


Topic(s): 
World Economy & Politics
Information Source: 
Canadian News Channel / International News Channel
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