Copy link Copied Copy link Copied Subscribe to gift this article Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Already a subscriber? Login For nearly a decade, US trade policy has been remade in the image of a single man: Robert Lighthizer. As president Donald Trump’s trade representative, he turned the United States away from six decades of support for a “rules-based”, multilateral trading system, and towards a robustly nationalist approach.
Lighthizer’s successor under President Joe Biden, Katherine Tai, has continued on the path he laid out. Even as most of Trump’s former officials have denounced him as unfit to be president again, Lighthizer has kept the faith – seeing in Trump, as many others do, a flawed vessel for some greater public good. He remains one of Trump’s top policy advisers in the 2024 campaign and would be set for a bigger job – likely Treasury secretary – if Trump wins in November.
Lighthizer’s mission of transforming not just US trade policy but broader US international economic policy is just getting started. Robert Lighthizer has been counselling his former boss Donald Trump to devalue the strong US dollar if he is elected in order to boost US exports. David Rowe Lighthizer’s influence was on full display in April, when Biden travelled to the headquarters of United Steelworkers, North America’s largest industrial union, in Pittsburgh, in the political battleground state of Pennsylvania.
Following the visit, .