The Mastermind of Tariffs Already Gave Us a Preview
Trump’s first trade representative didn’t return for his second term. But his ideas still loom large.
When they were a team.
Photographer: Kevin Dietsch/Pool via Bloomberg
President Donald Trump’s trade policy sure feels haphazard, leaving everyone searching for credible roadmaps. In recent days, there’s been significant attention paid to “A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System,” penned last year by economist Stephen Miran, Trump’s nominee to chair the Council of Economic Advisers. The document methodically lays out the administration’s options to, in effect, bully its way to more favorable trade, as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Clive Crook described recently. The extent of Miran’s influence on Trump’s thinking is unknown.
But the clearest guide to Trump’s trade policy comes from a man who some observers believe has lost influence in Trumpworld: Robert Lighthizer, the architect of the president’s first-term China pivot, who was passed over for a role this time. Still, it’s clear that his thinking continues to have extraordinary influence, even if the president sometimes gets Lighthizer’s priorities slightly twisted and executes less methodically than the veteran lawyer and negotiator would probably prefer. Jamieson Greer, Trump’s pick for the US trade representative, is Lighthizer’s former chief of staff. And Lighthizer’s 2023 book, No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America’s Workers, offers an expansive list of ongoing trade grievances that Trump seems to be addressing one-by-one, treating the book like a check list.