U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has picked Robert Lighthizer, a former trade official under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, as the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), Trump's transition team announced Tuesday.
Lighthizer, deputy USTR during the Reagan administration, had played a major role in developing trade policy for the administration and "negotiating roughly two dozen bilateral international agreements on a variety of topics from steel to grain", the transition team said in a statement.
In his new role, Lighthizer will work with Wilbur Ross, Trump's pick for commerce secretary, and Peter Navarro, head of the newly-created National Trade Council at the White House, "to develop and implement policies that shrink our trade deficit, expand economic growth, strengthen our manufacturing base and help stop the exodus of jobs from our shores," the statement said.
"He has extensive experience striking agreements that protect some of the most important sectors of our economy, and has repeatedly fought in the private sector to prevent bad deals from hurting Americans," Trump said in a statement. "He will do an amazing job helping turn around the failed trade policies which have robbed so many Americans of prosperity."
Lighthizer has an extensive experience in international trade law over three decades. If confirmed by the Senate as the USTR, Lighthizer would play a key role in delivering Trump's campaign promise to crack down on alleged unfair trading practices by other trading partners and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), analysts said.
Trump had made trade as a centerpiece of his presidential campaign and called for dramatic changes in U.S. trade policy, trying to appeal to angry and frustrated blue-collar voters who have seen manufacturing job loss in an increasing global economy. He had vowed to pull the country out of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and punish U.S. companies for off-shoring jobs.
