U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday this week named Robert Lighthizer to be his chief trade negotiator. Lighthizer is a former deputy U.S. trade representative under former Republican President Ronald Reagan. Lighthizer has been a critic of China’s trade practices.
Trump, who promised during his presidential campaign to renegotiate international trade deals like NAFTA and punish companies that ship work overseas, said in announcing his choice that Lighthizer would help “fight for good trade deals that put the American worker first.”
Lighthizer return to the agency follows nearly three decades as a lawyer representing U.S. steelmakers and other companies in anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases.
Lighthizer has argued that China has failed to live up to commitments made in 2001 when it joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) and that tougher tactics are needed to change the system, even if it means deviating from WTO rules.
Lighthizer is regarded as an experienced tactician with an intimate knowledge of trade tools that were widely used before the WTO was created in 1995, including “Section 301” tariffs used to stem a tide of imports of Japanese steel and vehicles in the 1980s.
“Bob Lighthizer is very smart, very strategic and totally fearless,” said a Washington attorney who has worked with him for three decades but asked not to be named, according to a Reuters report. “You can expect him to use every tool available to create leverage to get China and anyone else to stop the cheating. He is no fan of the WTO.”
As of publication today, President-Elect Trump has yet to name his pick for Secretary of Agriculture.
