![]() ![]() technological advances that had “dual-use” potential for military expansion. “The jobs and the technology were gone,” Lighthizer writes. operation in Valparaiso, Indiana, and moved it to Tianjin. Another U.S company, Magnequench, once had a near-monopoly on magnets that are integral to missile guidance systems, but in 1995 it was purchased by a consortium of an American firm and two Chinese companies, soon afterward moving its production to China. ![]() nuclear power research” and stole the rest, he writes. “In one fell swoop, China got the details of decades of U.S. On the contrary, Beijing’s long-term plan was to enrich and empower itself by systemically breaking nearly every promise, adopting mercantilist practices that include largely closed markets, subsidies to state-owned enterprises, industrial espionage, investment controls, currency manipulation, and relentless intellectual property theft.Ī classic example, Lighthizer writes, was what happened to Westinghouse, which partnered with China’s largest nuclear state-owned enterprise in the early 2000s and handed over the technology for its state-of-the-art AP1000 plants, only to find itself cut out of the market later. Trump, he writes, became the first president to fully acknowledge that China manifestly was not doing this. Lighthizer delivers a compelling case-which even seminal pro-trade economists like David Ricardo understood-when he argues that fully open trade works to everyone’s benefit only when it is balanced, when participating nations observe the rules, and labor and capital operate together. Secondly, he’s from the Midwest and is genuinely concerned about workers.” In his book, the Ohio-born Lighthizer makes a point of thanking labor leaders and acknowledging Lori Wallach-perhaps the most respected trade expert in the progressive movement-as “a longtime friend and co-conspirator who was a constant advisor and liaison with many on the Hill.” “The thing to understand about Lighthizer is that he’s been a well-informed critic of the mercantilism of other countries for 45 years,” Robert Kuttner, a leading progressive writer on economics, said in a phone interview. The leaders of the Democratic Party-starting with Biden-ignore Lighthizer at their peril. And Lighthizer, a professional trade negotiator with experience dating back to the Reagan administration, deserves credit not only for making much of this happen but for building a coalition from within the Republican Party that extends to trade skeptics on the progressive left who now see him as their champion. ![]() Trump turned international trade on its head, administering the final blow to the neoliberal (that is, free trade) consensus of the post-Cold War period and ushering in a new era of neo-protectionism and economic nationalism. But whether or not Trump ever sees the inside of the Oval Office again-as opposed to a prison cell-his most enduring legacy may well lie not in the success of his demagogic insurgency but in trade policy. Much of the mainstream media is now focused on the ugly horse race underway between Trump as he bids for reelection in 2024 and prosecutors bidding to put him behind bars, or at least take him out of action. But there is also considerable truth in this statement. President Joe Biden’s embrace of industrial policy, which Trump mostly ignored. There is some misrepresentation here-particularly when it comes to U.S. Lighthizer was Trump’s trade representative and was largely responsible for what he describes as a “fundamental shift in American trade policy: a shift that was long overdue and in the interest of all working Americans.” The evidence for this, Lighthizer argues, is that “n the ensuing years, the Biden administration-with a few important exceptions-has continued along the path President Trump and I laid out.” Trump, Lighthizer writes in his new book, No Trade Is Free, will go down as “a great president, truly one of the greatest.” 6 coup attempt-have indicated the 45th president is a danger to the republic and should never be reelected, Lighthizer holds to another set of criteria. ![]() ambassador, national security advisor(s), and an assortment of once-loyal lawyers appalled by Trump’s Jan. At a time when nearly every former senior member of Donald Trump’s administration-including his vice president, attorney general, chief of staff, secretary of state, U.N. Robert Lighthizer fits this otherworldly description as well, but for different reasons. We discovered this in the quarter-century after the Cold War, when so many trade economists assured us-in one of the great economic misjudgments of modern times-that China and other newly emergent developing nations wouldn’t harm American prosperity or cause serious social and political divisions. Trade experts often dwell in a separate reality. ![]()
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