Lighthizer wins the Long Game

Robert Lighthizer is a talker who uses his hands to communicate. He is a well-known public figure who talks quite a bit, and so uses his hands to communicate.

Talking about corporate globalism. The fingers move to one side. Television sets and t-shirts on sale. The palms are facing forward. Trade deficit growing? Forefinger stands straight up.

For decades his hand shaken the hands of Presidents and foreign dignitaries and has tried to steer American trade policy away from extremes to the mean. The former ambassador said that this extreme was a form of free trade ideology that places price optimization and consumption ahead of community values and production.

Most recently Lighthizer was the United States Trade Representative under President Trump. He was previously a partner in a large law firm that specialized on international trade law.

The former ambassador refused to accept paid positions on boards since he left office. He believed that this would limit his ability “to speak on the topics.” However, he has taken positions at a variety of advocacy organizations, including the Center for American Trade (AFPI), Oren Cass’s American Compass and Mike Pence’s Advancing American Freedom. He was a part of AFPI’s summit panel and gave a keynote address at Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s American Economic Forum. He is still writing editorials for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal . His current work includes a combination of memoir and policy prescription.

Simply put, Lighthizer uses his relative retirement to “build up that consensus and lobby through these institutions [and] meet with people.” While the Senate was confirming many of Trump’s appointees along party lines, Lighthizer was confirmed by a vote of 82-14, including “yea” votes from members as far to the Democratic left as New Jersey’s Cory Booker and Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono. The same chamber approved his United States-Mexico-Canada agreement in an 89-10 vote. Lighthizer, a native Ohioan, received two thumbs-up from Ohio Democrat Sherrod brown. Brown stated that he knew Lighthizer was ready to start building a trade policy that places American workers first

The ambassador said that while personality helps, policy is the most important thing. He also stated that the only people who dislike him are “ardent free-trade lobbyists.” I’m seen as Satan, who has created a new religion. They don’t like me.” He dismissed free trade in general as a shortsighted and unpracticable dogma. Lighthizer believes that a strong focus on maximising consumption is a good idea in times of shortage, but it doesn’t work in this time. It feeds more materialism and excess consumption. This is contrary to conservatism. Materialism is all about consumerism and neglecting values

Cue The word that the ex-ambassador is best known for: tariffs.

Cue the word for which the former ambassador is most well-known: tariffs.

This attitude towards tariffs wasn’t popular in the GOP at the time Lighthizer began his USTR job. The last time tariffs were mentioned at the Republican National Convention with Lighthizer-level enthusiasm was at the 1932 convention that nominated President Hoover. Then, the RNC claimed that “The Republican Party has always been the staunch supporter of the American system of a protective tariff.” By the 1980 convention, the Republican position was that “protectionist tariffs and quotas are detrimental to our economic well-being,” and by 2004, the Bush II re-election platform boasted of “eliminating tariffs.”

As the former ambassador stated at the recent AFPI Summit, “it’s certainly not without precedent that I have a view differing from everyone else in a space.” Lighthizer turned to the democratic of the deceased for intellectual support when his trade positions were less popular on the left. TAC’s Pat Buchanan was a living supporter of the tradition and Lighthizer welcomed him to talk to his political advisers during Trump’s administration.

In a 2018 Associated Press editorial, Buchanan quoted Congressman Abraham Lincoln: “Abandonment of the protective policy by the American Government must result in the increase of both useless labor and idleness and … must produce want and ruin among our people.” Buchanan went on to say, “In our time, the abandonment of economic patriotism produced in Middle America what Lincoln predicted, and what got Trump elected.”

Lighthizer concurs with the following analysis: “I believe he’s absolutely right. You can go way before Lincoln, Clay, who is Lincoln’s hero and Hamilton who is Clay’s, and that’s really all you need to do. It is easy to see the steady line. America was made great through subsidies but mostly tariffs and America First policy .

Where did the American right reach its breaking point on protectionist and tariff-based trade policies? Ambassador said that the American postwar trade policy was not a success. “We embarked upon this type of post-WWII consensus, which free traders would refer to it as, but it wasn’t really a consensus. It was an economic decision to make certain decisions for economically sound reasons. I think it is a good tradeoff when one is really, really rich. But when you are in deep debt, like us, it’s no longer a fair tradeoff

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Lighthizer sat at the same table as the vice-premier of the CCP, and many other diplomats from foreign countries in discussions that required persuasion. It’s not clear if the negotiations with China or his domestic policy discussions have demanded more persuasive tactics. The ambassador said that his core positions had not changed in the past. He was writing editorials in the New York Times in the late ’90s analyzing the U.S.-China relationship, criticizing China’s entrance into the WTO, and wryly critiquing dogmatic free trade-ism.

The ambassador attributes his trade policy priorities to instinct. “It’s more about who you are sympathetic to. Are you sympathetic to working people or elites? This is a fundamental instinct and I have always felt that my instinct was for the working class. That’s why I get along with a lot of Democrats, because I agree with them on a lot of things.” He says that working people on Main Street are “infinitely more likely to understand” the value in Trump-Lighthizer trade policy than elites, “whose reason is clouded by self-interest.”

In Lighthizer’s words, the Trump administration “sought to balance the benefits of trade liberalization with policies that prioritize the dignity of work.” Now, Lighthizer considers his views on trade to be “mainstream,” and the WSJ admits that “Republicans have embraced tariffs.” The next Republican administration will inherit a history and growing consensus to confront or sustain.