Summary of No Trade Is Free by Robert Lighthizer: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America's Workers

By GP SUMMARY

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This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book.

 

Summary of No Trade Is Free by Robert Lighthizer:Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America's Workers

 

IN THIS SUMMARIZED BOOK, YOU WILL GET:

 

• Chapter astute outline of the main contents.
• Fast & simple understanding of the content analysis.
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Robert Lighthizer, a key U.S. Trade Representative, led a significant reset of American trade policy over 40 years. He fought against one-sided free trade policies, focusing on corporate profits, cheap imports, and foreign governments. This led to a focus on corporate profits, cheap imports, and foreign governments, resulting in economic inequality and trade deficits. Lighthizer's book, No Trade is Free, is a memoir, history, and policy analysis that highlights the importance of a worker-focused trade policy and the fight for American jobs. It serves as a guide to the new world economy, which requires a worker-focused trade policy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookRix
• Release date: Jul 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9783755445944

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Summary of

No Trade Is Free

A

Summary of Robert Lighthizer’s book

Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America's Workers

GP SUMMARY

Summary of No Trade Is Free by Robert Lighthizer: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America's Workers

By GP SUMMARY© 2023, GP SUMMARY.

All rights reserved.

Author: GP SUMMARY

Contact: [e-mail]

Cover, illustration: GP SUMMARY

Editing, proofreading: GP SUMMARY

Other collaborators: GP SUMMARY

NOTE TO READERS

This is an unofficial summary & analysis of Robert Lighthizer’s No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America's Workers designed to enrich your reading experience.

DISCLAIMER

The contents of the summary are not intended to replace the original book. It is meant as a supplement to enhance the reader's understanding. The contents within can neither be stored electronically, transferred, nor kept in a database. Neither part nor full can the document be copied, scanned, faxed, or retained without the approval from the publisher or creator.

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Copyright 2023. All rights reserved.

Introduction

In 2010, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission was invited to testify before a panel of twelve experts to evaluate the impacts of China's joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) ten years on. The panel was led by a trade lawyer known for his skepticism of trade relations with China and the international trade system. The panel's testimony highlighted the disastrous effects of China's 2000 decision to grant China Most Favored Nation status on America and workers, as well as the economic calamity it had caused. The panel predicted that the situation would worsen if the US stayed on the same course, and made specific policy recommendations, including imposing tariffs on Chinese imports, to correct the problem.

The issue of American trade relations with China was not an isolated problem but was emblematic of larger issues in US trade policy. The political establishments of both the Republican and Democratic parties, under the influence of multinational corporations and importers, were unwilling or unable to recognize their mistakes. Instead, they remained convinced that government policy had to put American workers and manufacturers at risk amid a quest to maximize corporate profits and economic efficiency while minimizing consumer prices.

The result of this effort today is a starker, more indisputable failure than even the author could have predicted. While corporate profits soared for a select group of importers and retailers, many of America's manufacturing companies were hollowed out, forced into bankruptcy or moving their factories abroad. Working-class families now rely on two full-time incomes in lower-end service sector jobs to maintain the same quality of life one manufacturing sector income once provided.

The US has had fifty years of trade deficits with Japan, annual deficits of more than $300 billion with China for years, and enormous and sharply growing deficits with Europe (primarily Germany and Ireland). The first personal computer was rolled out by Apple in 1976, made in America. Today, the vast majority of personal computers are imported, and 78% of world production is in China.

The US's furniture manufacturing sector has exploded since the 1980s, with imports flooded the market and half the workforce lost their jobs. The US is now on track to import more food than it exports for the first time in its history.

Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 in substantial part because he opposed the failed policy that got us such miserable results and promised to change it. His philosophy of international trade is at odds with the radical free trade theology that got us here. The American manufacturing sector is crucial for the well-being of citizens, families, and communities. International trade is beneficial only if it contributes to these broader goals, as citizens are first producers and only second consumers. The Biden administration took over US trade policy in 2017, following the changes made by President Trump and his predecessors.

The Trump administration changed the objective of international trade policy, focusing on bringing manufacturing jobs back to America, reducing imports and increasing exports of manufactured goods and agricultural products. This led to increased tariffs, fought unfair practices, and fought against the WTO. Additionally, the Trump administration awakened the country and the world to the dangers of growing economic dependence on China, a mercantilist nation that poses a military, diplomatic, and economic threat. The trade deficit with China was reduced in five straight quarters leading up to COVID-19, and supply chains were shifting away from China to the US and other countries. The historic Phase One trade agreement with China maintained tariffs, brought about systemic change, and created new markets for American products.

The book aims to challenge the way people think about trade policy and describe the Trump administration's implementation of this philosophy, demonstrating how a more assertive US trade policy aimed at helping US workers can work in practice. The author argues that the US's trade policy should be based on a more nuanced understanding of the effects of international trade on the US and the world. They discuss the Trump administration's worker-focused trade policy, which reshaped the US's economic relationship with China, a major adversary in the world. The author explains that trade is the Achilles' heel of the US relationship with China, and that it is crucial to understand its economic policy and threats. They also discuss the Trump administration's use of tariffs to negotiate with China and the need for a strategic decoupling policy.

The author also discusses the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, the various international trade issues with other major trading partners and the global economy, and the path forward for America's approach to international trade. The author believes that the once nearly unanimous Washington consensus on free trade is dead, with President Biden adopting the Trump trade policy during his 2020 campaign. Understanding the shift in priorities is essential for anyone seeking a new path forward.

Part One

Foundations

Where It Started

In December 2016, the author was offered the position of United States Trade Representative, a position that would allow them to fight for a trade policy that supports a society where American workers can build better lives for themselves and their families through stable, well-paying jobs. The author's upbringing in Ashtabula, Ohio, was thriving in the 1950s and 1960s, with a port that brought in iron ore from the Minnesota Iron Range and shipped it by rail down to Pittsburgh to be made into steel. The city had a vibrant railroad industry and many small manufacturing jobs, many based at companies that supplied the auto industry in Detroit. However, many of the steel industry jobs that relied on that supply have moved overseas, and the manufacturing jobs supporting the auto industry in Detroit have also dwindled.

The author's upbringing in Ashtabula was influenced by his family's history of blue-collar jobs, with his father working in the steel mills and his mother attending Catholic school. The author's upbringing in Ashtabula was influenced by immigrants from Italy and Finland, and their experiences at Mother of Sorrows Catholic School in the area.

The decline of Ashtabula and much of the Midwest's industrial heartland is largely due to poor international trade policy and technological change. Surging steel imports have negatively impacted the port, and the country is no longer producing many of the things it needs. Instead, it imports goods from other countries and has them shipped to the US in an endless flow of container ships.

In the 1960s, the author attended Georgetown University in Washington, DC, which was both academically and socially exciting for him. The author's dedication to the fight for a better life for