Globalization is not going back to the way it was in the 90s, nor how it was prior to 2016 when Trump was elected and took up the playbook on the West’s Asia-centric trade model.
“We are seeing a new consensus on trade. A lot of credit goes to President Trump and a lot of it goes to a bunch of working class Democrats,” Robert Lighthizer said at the first-ever Prosperity Summit, hosted by CPA’s Education Fund on Feb. 26 in Jacksonville, Florida.
With regard to that new consensus, Lighthizer said that he was not in favor of subsidies, “but sometimes you need them or you’re going to lose your economy.”
He told a gathering of roughly 40 Congressional staffers that elected officials need to strive for the kind of economic and foreign trade policies that support manufacturing jobs.
Over the last few years, the life expectancy between someone with a college degree and one with only a high school diploma is now nine years. Very wealthy people are getting more wealthy and many middle class people are becoming tapped out. No one in Congress was elected to do that. What we have done for the last 30 years on trade and economic policy has hurt the country. It is time to do something else.
Lighthizer advocated for tariffs not just on China, but in general. He said he supported some subsidies, noting those in the CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and limiting investments by China multinationals in the United States, many of which are actually benefiting from the indirect subsidies provided for in the IRA law.
“The powers that be are satisfied by the rules, which is an indication that we shouldn’t be,” he said. “We have to remind ourselves why we care about manufacturing and why we want to rebuild it. It’s not about manufacturing per se, for the sake of making things. What we are trying to do is make communities; reshoring manufacturing is good for communities nationwide. We have to remind ourselves of that, because manufacturing jobs create strong communities, and strong communities have strong family ties. We have two thirds of the workforce without a college degree and those two thirds are going to determine whether we have a future or not. This is not a fringe group of society. This is a large part of the population and they are the ones who are going to determine whether we have a successful country or not,” he said. “What we are ultimately trying to do is make sure Americans in the middle can have a job, make money, and have their children be proud of their parents because they work.”
Lighthizer: Don’t Let the Critics Kill Bold Ideas
The former trade ambassador talked about all the times he has been attacked for his trade ideas in the Wall Street Journal. He said he would respond to the attacks in published letters. Then someone would write another op-ed attacking his letter. The crowd laughed at this go-round of vitriol between the status quo vision of a global economy, and one more centered on balanced trade, and the commonwealth of a nation opposed to corporate interests alone.
“When you think of bold ideas, don’t let people tell you it is going to cause a crash and all these crazy things,” he said. He was responding to questions from the audience about restrictions on capital markets invested in mainland China stocks. “Don’t believe any of it. It’s not true.”
MADE IN AMERICA.
CPA is the leading national, bipartisan organization exclusively representing domestic producers and workers across many industries and sectors of the U.S. economy.
Lighthizer: “A New Consensus on Trade is Emerging”
Globalization is not going back to the way it was in the 90s, nor how it was prior to 2016 when Trump was elected and took up the playbook on the West’s Asia-centric trade model.
“We are seeing a new consensus on trade. A lot of credit goes to President Trump and a lot of it goes to a bunch of working class Democrats,” Robert Lighthizer said at the first-ever Prosperity Summit, hosted by CPA’s Education Fund on Feb. 26 in Jacksonville, Florida.
With regard to that new consensus, Lighthizer said that he was not in favor of subsidies, “but sometimes you need them or you’re going to lose your economy.”
He told a gathering of roughly 40 Congressional staffers that elected officials need to strive for the kind of economic and foreign trade policies that support manufacturing jobs.
Lighthizer advocated for tariffs not just on China, but in general. He said he supported some subsidies, noting those in the CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and limiting investments by China multinationals in the United States, many of which are actually benefiting from the indirect subsidies provided for in the IRA law.
“The powers that be are satisfied by the rules, which is an indication that we shouldn’t be,” he said. “We have to remind ourselves why we care about manufacturing and why we want to rebuild it. It’s not about manufacturing per se, for the sake of making things. What we are trying to do is make communities; reshoring manufacturing is good for communities nationwide. We have to remind ourselves of that, because manufacturing jobs create strong communities, and strong communities have strong family ties. We have two thirds of the workforce without a college degree and those two thirds are going to determine whether we have a future or not. This is not a fringe group of society. This is a large part of the population and they are the ones who are going to determine whether we have a successful country or not,” he said. “What we are ultimately trying to do is make sure Americans in the middle can have a job, make money, and have their children be proud of their parents because they work.”
Lighthizer: Don’t Let the Critics Kill Bold Ideas
The former trade ambassador talked about all the times he has been attacked for his trade ideas in the Wall Street Journal. He said he would respond to the attacks in published letters. Then someone would write another op-ed attacking his letter. The crowd laughed at this go-round of vitriol between the status quo vision of a global economy, and one more centered on balanced trade, and the commonwealth of a nation opposed to corporate interests alone.
“When you think of bold ideas, don’t let people tell you it is going to cause a crash and all these crazy things,” he said. He was responding to questions from the audience about restrictions on capital markets invested in mainland China stocks. “Don’t believe any of it. It’s not true.”
MADE IN AMERICA.
CPA is the leading national, bipartisan organization exclusively representing domestic producers and workers across many industries and sectors of the U.S. economy.
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