The man who would help Trump upend the global economy

As a potential US Treasury secretary, Robert Lighthizer has more than trade policy to revolutionise.

Edward Alden

May 31, 2024 – 5.00am

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For nearly a decade, US trade policy has been remade in the image of a single man: Robert Lighthizer. As president Donald Trump’s trade representative, he turned the United States away from six decades of support for a “rules-based”, multilateral trading system, and towards a robustly nationalist approach.

Lighthizer’s successor under President Joe Biden, Katherine Tai, has continued on the path he laid out. Even as most of Trump’s former officials have denounced him as unfit to be president again, Lighthizer has kept the faith – seeing in Trump, as many others do, a flawed vessel for some greater public good.

Foreign Policy