Trump’s former U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer: ‘We're doing a very important thing for an absolutely essential benefit for the country’
‘I don’t think it’s perfect,’ Lighthizer says of the implementation of Trump’s tariffs. ‘But I never expected any of it to be perfect.’
During President Trump’s first term, Robert Lighthizer served as U.S. Trade Representative and was the mastermind behind Trump’s first trade war on China.
While Lighthizer is no longer Trump’s trade advisor, he remains a stalwart defender of tariffs, and has long credited Trump with changing the debate about trade in America and trying to solve the problems caused by globalization. So we wanted to bring him on the show to understand how he was thinking about Trump’s tariff war and the global economic turmoil that has ensued.
“I don't think it's perfect,” Lighthizer tells Margaret Hoover, referring to Trump’s implementation of his latest tariffs on “Liberation Day.” “But I never expected any of it to be perfect.”
“It takes time. It's hard. But we're doing a very important thing for an absolutely essential benefit for the country.”
Lighthizer’s trade philosophy can be traced back to his hometown of Ashtabula, Ohio, whose iron-ore industry was hollowed out in the last 50 years. A longtime critic of NAFTA and open trade with communist China, Lighthizer believes that tariffs will help revive American manufacturing.
“Historically,” he argues, “the United States had tariffs when it became the strongest country in the world and it maintained those tariffs for a long, long period of time, and they had that effect.”
Many studies suggest the costs of tariffs in Trump’s first term outweighed their benefits, but Lighthizer insists that they will work this time. Still, he concedes the new tariffs will raise prices.
“There's no question there'll be some increase in price on some goods until people can find out a way around it,” says Lighthizer.
But he argues enduring higher tariffs is a necessary step to achieve his goal of “balanced trade,” rather than the “slavish devotion” to free trade that he believes has cost millions of jobs.
“What's really happened is, we've had countries with industrial policies that have taken advantage, and others that have been taken advantage of,” says Lighthizer, author of No Trade Is Free. “So we have victims and predators. We are unfortunately a victim.”
There has been a great deal of criticism of the tariffs from the left and the right, but Lighthizer challenges those who say tariffs are the wrong approach to come up with a viable alternative. “Their solution is just keep doing what we're doing, and that has not worked.”
Whether or not Lighthizer would join the new administration if asked, well, you’ll have to watch the program to find out.
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