But in Donald Trump, Lighthizer found a president who shared his protectionist ideas. Together they shifted U.S. economic policy away from engagement with China toward confrontation. While the shift had been gathering speed for some years before 2016, none of Trump’s predecessors had been willing to bludgeon China with massive tariffs to pursue U.S. goals. Reversing U.S. policy toward China is probably the Trump administration’s most important economic legacy.

In No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America’s Workers, Lighthizer recounts how he fought China as Trump’s U.S. trade representative–essentially the top general in a three-year trade war–and recommends policies to finish the job. No challenge is more important, he argues. “China remains the largest geopolitical threat the United States has faced, perhaps since the American Revolution,” he writes, elevating China over Nazi Germany or Civil War secessionists.

Lighthizer has produced an important book, though a wildly uneven one. No Trade Is Free is sure to be a handbook for Republican presidential candidates searching for a China policy and economic nationalists across the board. During the Trump administration, Lighthizer was always in the running for White House chief of staff, and in our age-is-just-a-number political era, the 75-year-old Lighthizer is a likely candidate for that office or another senior post should Trump regain the White House.

No Trade Is Free is a kludge of two different books. The main part is an informative and provocative account of how he fought the China trade war and other trade battles. While he oversells his and Trump’s accomplishments and doesn’t acknowledge any of the failures, his efforts have important lessons for dealing with Beijing.

But he tacks on a shorter book in which he proposes truly radical policy recommendations to delink the U.S. and China. He would hike tariffs to towering levels, end the benefits China has received from the United States for joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), cut off investment between the nations, block Chinese social media companies, halt cooperation on technology–and keep the measures in place until China’s trade surplus, now nearly $400 billion, disappears. In other words, for decades if not forever.

He calls his proposals “strategic decoupling,” but there is nothing strategic about it. He would fully sever ties between the world’s two most important economies–with likely disastrous results.

Back then, his swagger and protectionism were a novelty. He raced a red Porsche 911 Targa at a track in West Virginia. For his 40th birthday, he installed a big oil portrait of himself in the parlor of his suburban Maryland home. “I think everyone should have one,” he joked with guests. “I don’t mean a painting of yourself; I mean a painting of me.” When he moved to Florida, he kept the painting but moved it to a less prominent location.

When he was Trump’s trade representative, I covered him intensively, sometimes flying with him to Beijing in the hopes of getting a hint of his next move in the trade war. That rarely worked; he would sleep nearly the entire 13-hour flight. I co-wrote a book about the trade war where he played a major role.

Sometimes he took sharp exception to what I wrote and once even denounced me and my co-author, Lingling Wei, by name in a press release for a story he thought was false. He stopped answering emails after we wrote a piece arguing the U.S. didn’t win the trade war. But in my exit interview with him two days after the storming of the U.S. Capitol, he said this: “I don’t always agree with you, as you know, but I–you know, you’re a hardcore, old-school journalist in a–in a–I mean, you’re like a goddamned, you know, dinosaur.” (I took that as a compliment.)

It wasn’t obvious that Lighthizer, a big, showy personality, would thrive under Trump. But his work with Dole taught him how to get along with a boss who has no interest in sharing the limelight, a crucial skill for working with Trump. In an administration filled with leakers and bumblers, Lighthizer was close-mouthed and competent. He didn’t call attention to himself like advisor Steve Bannon or fight Trump decisions like Defense Secretary James Mattis. Lighthizer was one of the few Trump aides whose reputation was enhanced through his service.

Lighthizer used Air Force One flights to Florida, where his home was just a few miles from Mar-a-Lago, to get to know his boss better. He made friends with Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and counted on the latter to help sew up some trade deals. In his book, Lighthizer is unfailingly complimentary of Trump and doesn’t say a word about Trump’s efforts to reverse the 2020 election or the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021–the events that caused another prominent China hawk in the administration, Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger, to finally resign.

The book recalls when Trump upbraided Lighthizer during a televised meeting with Chinese negotiators because Lighthizer was pushing for what’s called a “memorandum of understanding” with Beijing. In the trade world, an MOU is a deal that doesn’t require congressional approval, but in Trump’s real estate world it means a preliminary agreement. After making a brief effort to try to difference to Trump, Lighthizer recounts how he promised never to use the term MOU again. But he doesn’t say how his top aides later lobbied reporters to downplay any disagreement with Trump.

The Biden administration hasn’t had the political will yet to try to build on his work. And irony upon irony, Lighthizer praises the Biden team for continuing the tariffs, but not the deal. “Fortunately, the Biden administration so far hasn’t taken the bait” of cutting tariffs in the hopes of getting China to import more U.S. goods, he writes.

Lighthizer’s own opposition to China is rooted in his disdain for free trade and the rapid pace of globalization since the 1990s. As a young official in the Reagan administration, he helped negotiate deals to limit imports of Japanese cars and computer chips. After Japan’s economy cratered, China became the next target for economic nationalists like Lighthizer.

He criticizes what he calls China’s mercantilist policies, although his definition of mercantilism describes his own policy preferences. “Mercantilism is a school of nationalistic political economy that emphasizes the role of government intervention, trade barriers, and export promotion in building a wealthy, powerful state,” he writes. Exactly the direction he wants the United States to head.

An illustration shows Elon Musk caught in a tangle of scribbles with Twitter logo and blue checkmarks

An illustration shows Elon Musk caught in a tangle of scribbles with Twitter logo and blue checkmarks