Former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said he thinks the Republican Party’s Trump-era move away from free trade and big business is the new normal.
Lighthizer, who just released a book on trade policy and confronting China, told the Washington Examiner during a Thursday interview that the tectonic shift in trade policy spurred on by former President Donald Trump, including a preference for tariffs and increased protectionism, has become the main direction of the GOP and will remain that way heading into the 2024 elections.
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“The bottom line is the Republican Party, if it wasn’t apparent it is now, is the party of working people,” Lighthizer said. “The party of big banks and big businesses is the Democratic Party.”
Lighthizer said that before the Trump-era shift, the GOP tended to be a major supporter of free trade.
“It certainly is not now,” he asserted. “Let me put it this way, the mainstream of the voters is precisely where we are on this 'America First' trade policy. That’s where the voters are, and most of the politicians agree with that now, too."
The Republican Party has long featured high-profile members who subscribe to a school of free market economic thought that emphasizes reducing trade barriers and lowering tariffs, such as former Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey.
But Lighthizer said that while there are “a few holdouts,” most of the brand of trade policy he and Trump championed, including prioritizing families and workers, combating China, and trying to draw down the trade deficit, are the new normal for the GOP.
“That’s the mainstream now of the Republican Party on trade,” Lighthizer said. “Just for sure.”
Lighthizer, who served as Trump’s top trade adviser from 2017 to 2021, said he and Trump shifted the Overton window in two key ways: through a reexamination of what matters when it comes to trade policy and the economic response to the rapid rise of China as a geopolitical foe.
“We changed the objective of trade policy away from price optimization and corporate profits and more towards jobs and workers and families,” he said.
“It’s hard to remember how we thought about China six years ago, but certainly the Obama administration and most Americans didn’t realize the extent to which they were a hostile force and a hostile adversary,” Lighthizer said.
In order to effect such dramatic change, the Trump administration imposed massive tariffs as well as renegotiated long-held agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was replaced by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
“We did a lot of very bold things and changed the direction,” he said.
Lighthizer, 75, said his book, No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America's Workers, released this week, has been 50 years in making. He said he drew upon his experience on Capitol Hill, in private practice, and in the White House in crafting the volume, which is part memoir, part history, and part policy analysis. In addition to his decades at a private international law firm, Lighthizer was deputy U.S. trade representative for President Ronald Reagan and the chief of staff of the Senate Finance Committee under Chairman Bob Dole, a Kansas Republican.
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With the release of his new book, Lighthizer is remaining a major voice of protectionism in the debate over international and domestic trade policy. When asked by the Washington Examiner whether he would be open to serving in another administration role should Republicans win the White House in 2024, such as Trump or perhaps Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Lighthizer said he isn’t looking that far ahead.
“I refer to things like that as a rich man’s problem because it means we’ve won,” he said. “So I don’t know what I would do. Obviously, I’m a patriot and care about these issues … but I don’t know what I would do.”