White House cabinet officials on Tuesday dismissed reports that there was an internal struggle over who would take point in the upcoming trade negotiations with China, arguing that U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer was always the logical choice for the role.
“We have an integrated economic team,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said at a forum hosted by the Wall Street Journal, claiming that inside the White House it was not “one team versus another team.”
News outlets like the Journal and the New York Times read much into the fact that Lighthizer, a staunch critic of China’s policies, was designated the lead negotiator. A front-page story in the Journal’s Tuesday edition said the administration was giving an “expanded role” to Lighthizer, signaling a harder line in the talks.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross scoffed at that notion, telling CNBC Tuesday that Lighthizer was always going to be the one leading the negotiations because that is his job description. “Bob Lighthizer, by statute, is the official negotiator for the U.S. on trade deals, just as he was in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada deals, so I don’t know why anybody would have been that surprised that he would be the lead negotiator,” Ross said. “He has been acting in that capacity. So that’s not really news.”
President Trump struck a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the G-20 summit in Argentina Saturday night that included holding off for 90 days on a scheduled increase on tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent. In exchange, China made agreements to purchase an estimated $1.2 trillion in U.S. goods, the administration said. The 90-day deadline for negotiators to reach a deal began on Saturday, the administration said.
White House trade policy adviser Peter Navarro, a trade skeptic, told National Public Radio on Monday that Lighthizer was “in charge of these negotiations. He’s the toughest negotiator we’ve ever had at the USTR and he’s going to go chapter and verse and get tariffs down.” However, at about the same time on Monday Mnuchin told CNBC: “It’s clear that President Trump is going to be the one who leads the negotiations, and the team will be an inclusive team.” The apparent confusion was seen by trade policy watchers as evidence of internal turmoil inside the administration.
