Trump wants new penalties for China over trade secrets

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has ordered his chief trade negotiator to develop tougher tariff proposals to punish China for years of stealing U.S. trade secrets, according to industry executives familiar with the matter.

The order came after Trump last week rejected as inadequate a plan from U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to levy import taxes on $30 billion in Chinese imports, the people said.

The president’s message to his trade chief was “make it bigger,” said one lobbyist familiar with the discussion.

“The president told him it wasn’t enough,” a second executive said.

Both executives spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations.

The White House meeting was first reported Tuesday afternoon by Politico.

The report comes amid turmoil in the administration’s senior ranks with the departure of National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, both of whom have urged the president to avoid disrupting global commerce with new trade barriers in addition to recently announced tariffs on steel and aluminum.

Their departures followed the loss of Rob Porter, the White House staff secretary, who ran weekly trade policy meetings in the West Wing.

With fewer adherents of mainstream trade policy advising the president, economic nationalists such as Peter Navarro, a White House economist and fierce critic of China, have encouraged the president to follow his tariff-raising instincts.

The U.S. imported more than $505 billion worth of goods from China last year while sending more than $130 billion in the other direction, according to the Census Bureau.