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US: Trump Likely To Tap Up Lighthizer To Head Up USTR Again

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US President-elect Donald Trump is likely to tap up his first term US Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, to again head the USTS, according to reporting from the Financial Times. The USTR posting is one of the most closely scrutised Trump cabinet appointments considering the breadth of tariffs proposed by Trump on the campaign trail. 

  • FT notes it is uncertain if Lighthizer will accept the position as he has petitioned for both Commerce and Treasury Secretary, although the latter likely to go a prominent financier such as hedge fund managers Scott Bessent and John Paulson.
  • FT: "As Trump’s trade tsar, [Lighthizer] presided over a turbulent era for global trade as the administration repeatedly hit its largest trading partners — including its allies — with steep levies and tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of imports."
  • Lighthizer also shifted the US away from conventional Free Trade Agreements, breaking with a Washington orthodoxy that has been accelerated by the Biden Administration, with Biden on track to be the first president since Jimmy Carter not to negotiate a new FTA.
  • Lighthizer wrote in a op-ed ahead of the election: "Critics of Donald Trump’s popular tariff proposals claim they will be inflationary and harm the economy. The fact that this never happened during Trump’s first term, when we raised tariffs, is reason enough to be sceptical of such criticisms."
  • Rep Brendan Boyle (D-PA), a senior Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, noted: “When Bob Lighthizer was USTR I worked with him on USMCA. He was bipartisan in his approach and is well respected on both sides of the aisle.”
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US President-elect Donald Trump is likely to tap up his first term US Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, to again head the USTS, according to reporting from the Financial Times. The USTR posting is one of the most closely scrutised Trump cabinet appointments considering the breadth of tariffs proposed by Trump on the campaign trail. 

  • FT notes it is uncertain if Lighthizer will accept the position as he has petitioned for both Commerce and Treasury Secretary, although the latter likely to go a prominent financier such as hedge fund managers Scott Bessent and John Paulson.
  • FT: "As Trump’s trade tsar, [Lighthizer] presided over a turbulent era for global trade as the administration repeatedly hit its largest trading partners — including its allies — with steep levies and tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of imports."
  • Lighthizer also shifted the US away from conventional Free Trade Agreements, breaking with a Washington orthodoxy that has been accelerated by the Biden Administration, with Biden on track to be the first president since Jimmy Carter not to negotiate a new FTA.
  • Lighthizer wrote in a op-ed ahead of the election: "Critics of Donald Trump’s popular tariff proposals claim they will be inflationary and harm the economy. The fact that this never happened during Trump’s first term, when we raised tariffs, is reason enough to be sceptical of such criticisms."
  • Rep Brendan Boyle (D-PA), a senior Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, noted: “When Bob Lighthizer was USTR I worked with him on USMCA. He was bipartisan in his approach and is well respected on both sides of the aisle.”