‘He basically thinks that the U.S. is Uncle Sucker’
CHAMPION OF PROTECTIONISM NOW THE POINT MAN IN NAFTA TALKS WITH CANADA
Robert Lighthizer didn’t need to look far for evidence that manufacturing in the United States was in serious trouble.
As he left his Ohio hometown over 40 years ago, the steel mills that were the bedrock of the little Lake Erie port city of Ashtabula started to shutter one after another. It is now one of the poorest places in America, the remnants of those plants sent to be recycled elsewhere, the population dwindling.
For Lighthizer, now 70, the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs in places like Ashtabula has a root cause: unfair competition from cheap, foreign imports.
He has devoted much of his career to confronting that issue, negotiating “voluntary” quotas as a U.S. trade official in the 1980s then for decades afterwards as a lawyer representing steel firms fighting alleged dumping.
And now, as U.S. Trade Representative, it is Lighthizer — a man who once penned a New York Times Op-Ed piece in praise of protectionism — whom Canadian officials now face in increasingly fractious talks to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement. And who could do much to shape Canada’s economic future.
“He basically thinks that the U.S. is Uncle Sucker, and that prior trade agreements were not to the U.S.'s advantage, and that other countries were more clever and more sneaky in the way they do business,” says Gary Hufbauer, a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who has known Lighthizer for decades.
“He sees the world as fundamentally out to get the U.S.”
In that regard, Lighthizer is closely aligned with the views of his boss, President Donald Trump — and at odds with free-trade orthodoxy. But there is more to make the avid bird-hunter, golfer and fitness enthusiast a difficult counterpart for Canadians at the NAFTA bargaining table.
Associates and friends say he not only has an encyclopedic knowledge of trade law, but is a shrewd bargainer with a withering, if amusing, style.
“He’s probably the smartest and most capable guy in the cabinet,” said a former colleague, who spoke on the condition they not be named. “He is in a lot of ways a delightful character. He has a wicked sense of humour, he’s very engaging.”
That humour — described by others as acerbic, wry and acidic — can also be tinged with misogyny and racial insensitivity, said the ex-colleague.
“It’s lighthearted and not intended to be offensive ... He reminds me of my grandfather and some of his cronies.”
Close friend Roderick DeArment called Lighthizer’s negotiating style hard-nosed but transparent. “He kind of puts it right out there. I would listen to what he has to say, evaluate what he says, and don’t be offended by anything he says,” said DeArment, who met Lighthizer while studying for bar entrance in the 1970s. “He’s tough, and down the middle.”
Regardless, Canadians are discovering just how formidable an adversary he can be.
Lighthizer told a U.S. Senate hearing last week he is close to achieving a separate deal with Mexico, which he hopes he can then use to pressure Canada into making compromises. Indeed, sources said Canadian foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland tried to get an invitation to a meeting between Lighthizer and Mexico’s economy minister in Washington Thursday and Friday, but was rebuffed.
One U.S. source briefed on the negotiations told the Post Lighthizer dislikes Freeland, believing she went behind his back by lobbying members of Congress, many of whom have been critical of Trump trade tactics. Lighthizer’s office took the rare step Tuesday of issuing a statement saying that he considers Freeland a “good friend.” But he still won’t be meeting with her this week.
Since leaving Ohio, Lighthizer has spent much of his life in and around Washington, attending university and law school here and then joining a local firm.
He worked there with DeArment, launching a friendship that has included yearly treks to Wyoming for pheasant hunting. Lighthizer is an “excellent shot,” his friend noted.
Within a few years, they were both working for the Senate’s finance committee under then-chairman Bob Dole, Lighthizer as its staff director, DeArment his deputy.
Even then his negotiating acumen was in evidence, as he painstakingly manoeuvred to have finance take over responsibility for trade from another committee, said the former colleague who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He is a very strategic thinker, he thinks many moves ahead.”
Lighthizer was appointed as a deputy U.S. trade representative under President Ronald Reagan, charged with negotiating what were called “voluntary trade agreements” with foreign nations then flooding the U.S. with manufactured goods.
The deals he made in that role employed what were in some ways subtler versions of the tactics Trump and Lighthizer have used recently.
Lighthizer would outline the punishing restrictions America planned to impose if the foreign nation continued to feed cheap steel into the U.S., then make an offer the country likely couldn’t refuse: a deal that would see them willingly reduce those levels less drastically.
“He would create situations where there is a sense of urgency to the negotiation: something bad was gong to happen by a certain time unless the parties came to a resolution,” said the former colleague.
But the agreements worked, helping revive American industry while avoiding the kind of chaos created by the steel and aluminum tariffs Trump imposed on Canada and other countries recently, the source said.
The deals were later barred by the World Trade Organization, a body Lighthizer dislikes — he cited the “whims” of its “anti-American bureaucrats” in his 2008 op-ed.
He eventually returned to private law practice, but remained loyal to Dole — acting as treasurer on one of his presidential campaigns — and in literal close proximity to D.C. power.
From his downtown office, he would use binoculars to watch then President Bill Clinton take chip shots on the White House’s south lawn, the Baltimore Sun reported in 1996.
As a lawyer his practice largely involved representing steel companies, often in cases that applied U.S. antidumping law, which slaps duties on imported goods allegedly sold at less than market value. Hufbauer, who believes the law punishes a pricing tactic that is perfectly legal among domestic competitors, called Lighthizer “Mr. Dumping.”
His 2008 op-ed solidified his status as a free-trade skeptic, criticizing Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s support for the concept, and warning that the existing global trade regime was allowing China to become a superpower.
Free traders “oppose any trade limitations, even if we must depend on foreign countries to feed ourselves or equip our military,” Lighthizer wrote, echoing his current defence of Trump’s nationalsecurity-based steel tariffs.
When a like-minded president asked him to be USTR last year he embraced the request, even though he was starting to wind down his law practice, said DeArment. "I think he was looking forward to playing more golf.”
His stance in renegotiating NAFTA — one of Trump’s central campaign promises — has certainly not been retiring.
Canadian and Mexican officials recoiled at his initial demands — a five-year sunset clause that would require the agreement to be re-approved regularly, tough rules for increasing American content in cars imported from the other countries, and a partial dismantling of NAFTA’s disputeresolution system.
In the process, Lighthizer — who reportedly has a portrait of himself displayed in his home — has risen in stature within the administration, and now is roughly an equal to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, said Hufbauer.
But as powerful a force as he is, Canada should “hang tough,” the Peterson Institute expert argues. Agreeing to American demands on issues like the sunset clause and dispute resolution could leave it worse off than no deal at all, he said.
“I don’t think Canada gets any benefit by conceding the whole Lighthizer agenda,” said Hufbauer. “Canada has a lot of natural strengths. It can live without NAFTA if that’s what it comes to.”
HE HAS A WICKED SENSE OF HUMOUR, HE’S VERY ENGAGING.