The little-known trade adviser with enormous power in Washington
WASHINGTON — Rober Lighthizer just became one of the most powerful people in Washington.
Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative, will spend the next 14 days deciding which countries, if any, will be exempt from the stiff and sweeping steel and aluminum tariffs that President Donald Trump authorized on Thursday.
The issue is expected to dominate discussions in Brussels on Saturday between Mr. Lighthizer and his trade counterparts in Japan and the European Union, with the European trade commissioner saying on Thursday that Europe should be excluded. Dozens of other countries that import metals into the U.S. — such as Brazil, the United Arab Emirates and South Korea — are demanding a carveout or threatening retaliation if they are included.
It is a fight Lighthizer has been preparing for his entire life.
Lighthizer, 70, grew up in a well-off family in a Midwest town that did not share his fortune. Ashtabula, Ohio, a port town on the shores of Lake Erie, saw its surrounding steel mills shutter and decline as factories automated and moved abroad. The decimation of local manufacturing shaped his views on trade, friends said, hardening his approach and leading him to become a skeptic of globalization.
In the 1980s he brought that skepticism to Washington where, as deputy trade representative for President Ronald Reagan, he wielded the threat of tariffs to persuade Japan and other countries to cut their steel shipments to the U.S. A lawyer by training, he continued his defense of American industry after his government stint, filing lawsuits on behalf of American steel giants like United States Steel who claimed they were withering from foreign competition and sought government protection from what they saw as unfair practices abroad.
In the intervening years, Lighthizer has embraced the view that countries like China, South Korea and Mexico have bent or broken global trade agreements to take business from the United States, generating worrisome trade deficits and weakening American manufacturing.
To reverse the trend, Lighthizer is trying to rewrite global trade rules in the United States’ favor. He has found his trade policy soul mate in Trump, who has elevated Lighthizer’s role and given him his blessing to embark on an unapologetic mission to take away advantages from countries and systems that both men believe have cheated the U.S.
That includes preparing a major trade action against China, which Lighthizer has been working on for months and will be aimed at curbing intellectual property theft. It includes efforts to overhaul the World Trade Organization, which trading partners describe as a plan to strip away that organization’s power and clout. But, mostly, it includes sprawling and contentious negotiations with South Korea over the future of its trade deal with the U.S. and, especially, with Canada and Mexico over the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Trump has dangled the potential for the two trading partners to be permanently exempt from the steel and aluminum tariffs, as long as they agree to a NAFTA deal that satisfies U.S. demands. What that means, exactly, remains to be seen. The three countries have already been through seven rounds of negotiations over revising the 1994 pact, with little progress to show for it and fairly intractable views on several major provisions.
Lighthizer had a mixed view of the tariffs, supporting the plan during meetings in the Oval Office, but privately expressing concerns that broad measures could target allies rather than the real culprit, China, according to people familiar with his views who were not authorized to speak publicly.
At times, Trump seems to have taken his China-bashing language straight from Lighthizer, including in late February when the president blamed the World Trade Organization for China’s rise.
It is that combination of nationalist instincts and keen understanding of trade law that has aided Lighthizer’s rise in the White House.
Lighthizer has emerged as the indispensable adviser, espousing the type of get-tough views on China and other countries that were red meat to Trump.
With NAFTA, Lighthizer has pursued significant reforms aimed at retracting global supply chains back into the U.S., and removing what he describes as incentives for corporations to take their investments abroad. His approach has put him at odds with business groups, Republican lawmakers and foreign ministers. But Lighthizer seems emboldened, not cowed, by the conflict. He has criticized foreign counterparts and dismissed the requests of Republican lawmakers who want the U.S. to avoid sinking trade deals that have been good for companies in their states.
Rufus Yerxa, the president of the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents major American exporters, said Lighthizer shared “a certain common theme” with many of the hardline trade advisers surrounding Trump: that “the United States has lost its greatness because it’s lost many of its basic industries.”
Lighthizer set the stage for a tough negotiation in August, when he said his criticisms of NAFTA echoed those of the president, who was “not interested in a mere tweaking” of the agreement. “We feel that NAFTA has fundamentally failed many, many Americans and needs major improvement,” Lighthizer said.
He has also been unsparing in his criticism of American companies that benefit from NAFTA, likening the pact to “sugar” that lures businesses to invest in Canada and Mexico, rather than the U.S.
“If you can get some labor unions on board, Democrats on board, mainstream Republicans on board, I think you can get big numbers,” Lighthizer said in Montreal in January.
But to get there, he has said that the companies that currently benefit from the pact may have to surrender some of their advantages.
That view has been deeply unpopular with free-trade Republicans in Congress, as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The chamber, which usually operates in lock step with a Republican White House, argues that the drastic changes Lighthizer has proposed — like tightening the rules for manufacturing cars in North America, or scrapping a process for settling investment disputes that bypasses U.S. courts — could destabilize American industry and the economy.