[CTC] Trump expected to name Lighthizer as USTR

[Arthur Stamoulis]

*Two articles below...*

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01
/02/trump-to-name-lighthizer-as-trade-representative-tap-pe
nce-adviser-for-west-wing

Trump to name Lighthizer as trade representative, tap Pence adviser for
West Wing

By Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker January 2 at 11:57 PM


President-elect Donald Trump is expected to nominate Robert E. Lighthizer
as the U.S. trade representative, a transition official confirmed Monday
night, recruiting to his Cabinet a veteran of the Reagan administration who
has decades of experience in trade policy and litigation.

Lighthizer, whose nomination is expected to be formally announced as early
as Tuesday, will join a team of Trump lieutenants charged with fulfilling
one the central promises of Trump's populist candidacy: aggressively
confronting China, Mexico and other nations the president-elect believes
have been taking advantage of international trade agreements, to the
detriment of U.S. workers.

In the run-up to his Jan. 20 inauguration, Trump will be making a flurry of
final nominations for his Cabinet as well as filling out the senior
positions in his White House.

Trump has recruited Marc Short, who has been serving as a top adviser to
Vice President-elect Mike Pence, to the West Wing, likely as head of
legislative affairs, three people with knowledge of the position said
Monday night. Short will work with Rick Dearborn, who has been serving as
executive director of the Trump transition team and is expected to be named
White House deputy chief of staff overseeing legislative, intergovernmental
and Cabinet affairs.

Dearborn is a former chief of staff to Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who is
Trump’s nominee for attorney general, and together with Short will manage
the administration's legislative agenda and the president's relationships
with lawmakers.

Short is a longtime veteran operative with deep ties on Capitol Hill and is
respected by Republican leaders in both chambers. He served as Pence's
chief of staff during his time in Congress and later worked as president of
Freedom Partners, the powerful political network of the billionaire
industrialist brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch. A longtime Pence
loyalist and confidant, Short joined Trump's 2016 campaign team as an
adviser to Pence once the Indianan received the vice-presidential nod. He
earlier advised Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on his 2016 presidential campaign.

Although some in the Pence orbit were initially skeptical of Trump and his
team, Short quickly established himself as a conduit between the Pence and
Trump worlds and earned the respect of Trump. He has been an influential
figure behind the scenes during the transition period, both in weighing
personnel decisions and charting the policy agenda.

Mike Allen, co-founder of Axios, a new media company, first reported
Short's position in a tweet.

 The Wall Street Journal was first to report that Lighthizer, long
considered a favorite to be trade representative, would become Trump's
nominee.

Short and Lighthizer bring to the Trump team years of experience in
Washington. Lighthizer served as deputy U.S. trade representative under
President Ronald Reagan, and before that as chief of staff on the Senate
Finance Committee.

Lighthizer has deep roots in the Republican establishment, having served as
national treasurer for former Senate majority leader Robert J. Dole's 1996
presidential campaign. Lighthizer currently works as a partner at Skadden,
Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, where he specializes in international trade
issues.

In the Trump administration, Lighthizer will work closely on trade issues
with Wilbur Ross, a billionaire investor who is the nominee for commerce
secretary, and Peter Navarro, an economist and China hawk who has been
tapped to lead a new White House National Trade Council.

---


FROM 2008...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/opinion/06lighthizer.html


The Opinion Pages | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Grand Old Protectionists

By ROBERT E. LIGHTHIZER

MARCH 6, 2008


Washington

NOW that John McCain is, formally, the presumptive presidential nominee of
the Republican Party, he can stop worrying about winning primaries and
caucuses and start worrying about winning over conservatives. Mr. McCain
still faces a large challenge from his right in the fall, as many
conservatives suspect he isn’t really one of them.

To prove his bona fides as a conservative, Mr. McCain and his defenders
often cite his support for free trade. A writer in National Review, for
example, suggested last year that conservatives should support Senator
McCain because he is, in Mr. McCain’s own estimation, the strongest free
trader in the Senate since Phil Gramm (an adviser to Mr. McCain) left that
body.

Mr. McCain may be a conservative. But his unbridled free-trade policies
don’t help make that case.

Free trade has long been popular with liberals, and it remains so with
liberal elites today. The editorial pages of major newspapers consistently
support free trade. Ted Kennedy supported the advance of free trade.
President Bill Clinton fought hard to win approval of the North American
Free Trade Agreement. Despite some of his campaign rhetoric, Barack Obama
is careful to express qualified support for free trade, even when stumping
in the industrial Midwest.

Moreover, many American conservatives have opposed free trade. Jesse Helms,
the most outspoken conservative in the Senate for three decades, was no
free trader. Neither was Alexander Hamilton, who could be considered the
founder of American conservatism.

For almost 100 years after the Civil War, the Republican Party (led by men
like Lincoln and McKinley) was overtly protectionist. Theodore Roosevelt, a
hero of John McCain’s, wrote that “pernicious indulgence in the doctrine of
free trade seems inevitably to produce fatty degeneration of the moral
fiber.”

The first significant Republican free trader was President Dwight
Eisenhower. But Harry Truman tried to recruit him to run for the White
House as a Democrat, and his political affiliation was not clear until he
actually began running for the 1952 Republican nomination. Conservatives in
1952 supported the presidential bid of Robert Taft, a steadfast opponent of
free trade.


If you watched the Republican presidential debates — and had no other
knowledge of economic history — you might believe that Ronald Reagan, the
personification of modern conservatism, was a pure free trader. During a
debate in Michigan, for example, Mr. McCain said that President Reagan
“must be spinning in his grave” to hear Republicans expressing concerns
about free trade. But while free traders like to quote some of President
Reagan’s open-markets rhetoric, they did not like many of his actual trade
policies.

President Reagan often broke with free-trade dogma. He arranged for
voluntary restraint agreements to limit imports of automobiles and steel
(an industry whose interests, by the way, I have represented). He provided
temporary import relief for Harley-Davidson. He limited imports of sugar
and textiles. His administration pushed for the “Plaza accord” of 1985, an
agreement that made Japanese imports more expensive by raising the value of
the yen.

Each of these measures prompted vociferous criticism from free traders. But
they worked. By the early 1990s, doubts about Americans’ ability to compete
had been impressively reduced.

President Reagan’s pragmatism contrasted strongly with the utopian dreams
of free traders. Ever since Edmund Burke criticized the French philosophes,
Anglo-American conservatism has rejected ivory-tower theories that
disregard the realities of everyday life.

Modern free traders, on the other hand, embrace their ideal with a passion
that makes Robespierre seem prudent. They allow no room for practicality,
nuance or flexibility. They embrace unbridled free trade, even as it helps
China become a superpower. They see only bright lines, even when it means
bowing to the whims of anti-American bureaucrats at the World Trade
Organization. They oppose any trade limitations, even if we must depend on
foreign countries to feed ourselves or equip our military. They see nothing
but dogma — no matter how many jobs are lost, how high the trade deficit
rises or how low the dollar falls.

Conservative statesmen from Alexander Hamilton to Ronald Reagan sometimes
supported protectionism and at other times they leaned toward lowering
barriers. But they always understood that trade policy was merely a tool
for building a strong and independent country with a prosperous middle
class.

Free traders like Mr. McCain instead rely too often on the notion that we
should change the country to suit their trade policy — an approach that is
not in the best traditions of American conservatism.

Robert E. Lighthizer, a trade lawyer, was a deputy trade representative in
the Reagan administration and the treasurer of Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential
campaign.
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