Robert Lighthizer

They had all their manufacturing in China.

And a man named Robert Lighthizer, who was the trade rep under the first Trump 45 term, he back in 2003 started the trade actions against Chinese companies in the steel industry.

And it spread.

I mean, there are so many trade actions against Chinese companies in China.

And Duluth was, I don't want to say it was a ghost town, but it was scuzzy.

I mean, it was just not great because there was no money up there and people lived for decades unemployed.

And President Trump and Robert Lighthizer, his first trade rep in 40- his 45th presidency, they started walling off this steel and aluminum with trade barriers.

And man, when I got to Bulkloke, Minnesota, which is just on the edge of Duluth, you could feel the vibrancy in juxtaposition to the last time I was there.

He's an awful good guy.

He was Lighthizer's deputy in the first term.

I talked to him frequently.

I talked to Howard Blutnick frequently, the Commerce Secretary.

People forget this.

Even President Trump.

Bob Lighthizer, bless his heart, dear friend, trade rep under Trump.

Bob was the youngest deputy trade rep ever.

Don't we owe it to ourselves and our communities and our nation to try some different things or adjust course? And there's one book that I think encapsulated that after I had already made my way through that journey and I didn't know I had common cause with him until I actually worked with him later.

And that was Robert Lighthizer, Bob Lighthizer.

He did a book called No Trade is Free.

And so it didn't shape my journey or his, but I think he summarized it better than I ever could have.

that's right and speaking of which i know we're coming up we got about three minutes left let me ask you The president was an avid trade warrior.

And I always and I briefed Robert Lighthizer's team in the first term about this.

You know, I was in

favor of limited national security related industries getting tariffs and, you know, making sure we could reindustrialize in things like rare earths and building more refineries, etc., etc.

Many of the businesses that have talked to the president see it that way.

And so we're sort of behaving on that, which I think leaves you to sort of go back to April of 2025 to ask, one, did the Trump administration really anticipate this? Did they see this as an arrow in Beijing's quiver and were they prepared to do it? Or did we up the ante not really knowing that this was going to happen? Did that catch us off guard? And I think about Robert Lighthizer, who served in the Trump administration in a variety of roles over many years, especially on China and trade, agree or disagree with different aspects of what he did.

But one thing I think he's always been good about is you know you don't you don't go in with say a tariff or a new export control or something uh that you're not going to be able to sustain that you're going to have to pull back you got to be careful about how you graduate that and i think that's where um i think i think when he was

u.s trade representative i mean you know applying uh sort of his his uh approach to allies was was something that gave me pause but uh the manner in which he applied it against the prc i always thought was admirable uh and uh you know had a strong rationale um all right doesn't it in the remaining time you know we hit off we ticked off you know iran taiwan uh we're talking about you know critical minerals um you know and we have the upcoming uh meetings um where do we need to go? Like, where are you hoping we can take this, you know, sort of this, you know, constructive relationship, strategic stability, may not be the optimal goal from where you sit, but it is where we're at.

You're just hopeless, which might be more true for them than for somebody who's a plumber or an electrician because AI is very directly replacing what they're doing.

One of the metrics that seems to be underpinning the trade philosophy of America, literally written by Robert Lighthizer in his book, is jobs, is the quality of work that people can do.

So measuring jobs seems to be a key one for the Trump administration to see if its policies are successful.

That may be an unfortunate one to have chosen, But do you see any value in the shift that tariffs represent? Because we can say these are Trump policies, but I think we all agree now that the world has adopted a more protectionist, less free trade view of at least the near future.