Lighthizer vows to crack down on unfair China practices

Pick for US trade representative says Trump is committed to getting tough with Beijing 
By Shawn Donnan in Washington

Robert Lighthizer: 'I don’t believe that the WTO was set up to deal effectively for a country like China'
Donald Trump’s pick as US trade representative has vowed to find new ways to crack down on unfair trade practices by China, suggesting that the World Trade Organisation is ill-equipped to deal with Beijing’s industrial policy.
Addressing a Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Robert Lighthizer said Mr Trump, who railed against China throughout last year’s presidential campaign, remained committed to getting tough with Beijing and using a “multi-faceted approach” to crack down on trade abuses.
 “I believe [Mr Trump] is going to change the paradigm on China and, if you look at our problems, China is right up there,” Mr Lighthizer told senators.
Asked how he planned to address Chinese overproduction of steel and other products, the former Reagan administration official said he believed that dealing with Beijing called for creative new US approaches outside the WTO.  
“I don’t believe that the WTO was set up to deal effectively for a country like China and their industrial policy,” he said.
“We have to use the tools we have and then I think we have to find a responsible way to deal with the problem by creating some new tools.”
Tuesday’s hearing marked the public debut of a man expected to play an important role in delivering the president’s “America First” trade agenda.
It also demonstrated why many expect Mr Lighthizer to do so by testing the bounds of global trading rules.
He has a reputation as a brash lawyer with an ego to match the president’s.
People who have visited his home report encountering a towering — some say “life size” — portrait of him for visitors to admire.
“He’s no shrinking violet,” said one Washington trade lawyer who has worked with him.
Mr Lighthizer is also known as a ferocious political operator and negotiator.
A close aide in the late 1970s and early 1980s to Bob Dole, the former senator and presidential candidate, Mr Lighthizer rose rapidly through the staff ranks on Capitol Hill before joining the Reagan administration as deputy US trade representative while still in his 30s.
In that job he went toe to toe with Japan and other countries to negotiate “voluntary export restraint” agreements on steel and other products.
In private practice since the 1980s, Mr Lighthizer, 69, has become renowned as a representative for US steel and one of the most aggressive users of the US’s anti-dumping laws to block imports from China and other countries.
Alan Wolff, chairman of the National Foreign Trade Council and a prominent Washington trade lawyer who has worked alongside Mr Lighthizer on cases, said the incoming USTR had long been focused on defending America’s heavy industry.
His view of the importance of manufacturing to the US economy aligned both with Mr Trump and others brought in to deliver on the president’s campaign promises to bring back industrial jobs.
“I don’t think there’s a lot of daylight between him and [new commerce secretary] Wilbur Ross. They care about the industrial base. That’s always been their view on trade,” Mr Wolff said.
But it is his views on the WTO and China that may be most likely to prove important in the years to come.
In 2010 testimony to a congressional commission he called for the US to be more belligerent in its approach to China and the WTO. 
For too long, American governments had observed “an unthinking, simplistic and slavish dedication” to WTO rules, particularly with regard to China. 
“Derogation may be the only way to force change in the system,” he wrote.
That attitude and a sceptical view of the WTO’s dispute settlement system was on display in a March 1 report to Congress setting out the administration’s trade agenda.
The latter, said Mr Wolff, was drawn from repeated rulings rejecting some US anti-dumping practices.
“It’s not just one case. It’s a string of cases,” he said.
In other written pieces Mr Lighthizer has argued more broadly for the Republican party — and its presidents — to embrace the protectionism of their elders and the aggressive negotiating tactics of Ronald Reagan.
Faced with an administration engaged in its own internal trade war, some pro-trade Republicans also have hopes for Mr Lighthizer.
They see him as far less likely to blow up the system than potential internal rivals such as Peter Navarro, head of Mr Trump’s National Trade Council.
Mr Lighthizer’s nomination has been held up by a debate over whether he needs a congressional waiver to overcome a legal ban on US trade representatives having worked for foreign governments. Democrats insist that he does because of work he did for Brazil and China in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
They are also seeking to use this as leverage to push through other legislation.
But Republicans who see him as a potentially moderating force in an administration lacking in nuance on trade are eager to see Mr Lighthizer installed quickly.
“He’s got a great deal of experience — and there’s a lot of people in the administration who don’t have very much,” Charles Grassley, the Iowa senator, said ahead of the hearing.